It’s still early Saturday morning. I should have called Landry or Schroder, but instead I’ve driven to the hospital. I need to work my own way, especially if I’m to get the opportunity to dig Sidney Alderman out of his wife’s grave. There’s no way I can do that if I’m in custody answering questions about how I know what I know.
Visiting hours on a Saturday morning mean the corridors are full of disoriented-looking family members and friends. The air has the sickly smell of disinfectant and vomit, but you get used to it pretty quick. Emma’s father pushes me in the chest and I fall back a few steps. I don’t put up a fight. He advances towards me.
A few people look over but no one does anything. “I should have killed you,’ he says.
‘There’s still plenty of time for that,’ I say, holding my hands up in surrender. ‘At least listen to me before you get kicked out of the hospital for assault.’
‘You’re the goddamn reason we’re in here,’ he says. ‘They’d kick you out and give me a medal.’
‘Maybe you should hear me out,’ I say. ‘I have some interesting things to say. You are my lawyer, remember. You signed me out.
That means it’s your job to talk to me. If not, I’ll go to your firm and find another lawyer. I tell them all about you. All about that trip we took.’
‘Fuck you.’
‘You didn’t think it through, did you? I’m your responsibility until that court date has come and gone. See, you figured I’d be dead by then and it wouldn’t matter. But now it does. Help me out and I change lawyers. Nobody has to know what happened.’
‘Go to hell.’
‘Think about it. Calm down and think about it.’
He takes a step back and stands in the doorway of the ward.
He looks at his daughter. She’s awake and hooked up to a bunch of machines. There is a TV going. She glances from the TV to her father. Then his wife, an attractive blonde woman dressed perhaps a little too formally for a hospital, looks at me too. She knows something is going on but doesn’t know what. There is no recognition. If there was she’d start screaming. She’d claw out my eyes. My lawyer turns back towards me.
‘What do you want?’
I explain what I want, and the whole time he shakes his head.
‘Impossible,’ he finally says.
“I thought lawyers thrived on the impossible.’
‘We thrive on sure-things.’
‘But you make more money on the impossible.’
“No judge will sign off on it.’
‘that’s the point, right? You don’t need one to. Just get the template for me and I can do the rest. Then you don’t hear from me again. Look, nothing is going to happen. I’m never going to tell anybody where I got it from.’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘that’s right,’ he says. “I go to my boss and explain what I did to you, and he understands. He’ll tell me he would have done the same thing.’
‘And maybe I go to the papers and tell them about you. Even if they don’t believe me, it still puts your name in disrepute. People might sympathise with you, they might even relate, they’ll probably wish you’d pulled the trigger, but that’ll be on their mind every time they’re passing you over in preference for another lawyer.’
‘Won’t happen. People will love me for it.’
“I think you have a great misunderstanding of what people love. You prepared to take that risk?’
He looks back at his wife. She’s looking a little concerned, but I bet she doesn’t know about the field trip her husband took me on.
My lawyer planned on killing me. He didn’t succeed, and I’m here to pull him deeper into the world he stepped foot in. Only I’m also giving him an exit. He just needs to see that — and, being a lawyer, I figure he will.
‘Just the template,’ he says.
‘that’s all.’
‘It’ll take an hour.’
‘I’ve got time.’
I head upstairs to the cafeteria and order some coffee and a couple of chicken and egg salad rolls. There are a few newspapers lying around. There is nothing in the front-page photo of Father Julian to suggest that he was living a secret life. There is a stock quote from somebody high up in the police: We are following up on leads but can’t release any further details at this time. They have a murder weapon and no suspect. There is another article a few pages in. It details Father Julian’s history. He was assigned to the church thirty years ago. He was born in Wellington to a middle-class family, he excelled academically at school, he joined the priesthood at twenty-one. His mother died twenty-five years ago, his father is still alive. There are facts and figures that would be thrown out of whack if I were to tell them Father Julian fathered all those children.
I read through the rest of the newspaper but don’t get to the end before Donovan Green is back. He pulls out the seat opposite me, seems about to sit down, then changes his mind. He doesn’t want to sit with a guy like me. He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out an envelope. He sits it on the table and keeps two fingers on it.
‘We’re done now, right?’ he asks.
‘That depends.’
‘On?’
‘On whether that’s a Christmas card in there or what I asked for.’