FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 28
An awful night. I don’t get home until after midnight. The house is dark, Piper and Gabby both long in bed. I sit behind my office desk in the dark for close to an hour, the only sounds my own breathing and the rhythmic ticking of the antique grandfather clock in the living room. I mentally relive the day, amazed and horrified at how the world can turn on a dime. I ponder the plan I’ve constructed to save everyone from the fallout of Jennifer Yamura’s death. I analyze it, tear apart and rebuild it, over and over. What could go wrong? How can I guarantee nothing will? The answers are always the same: a million things. Or nothing.
Wearily, I make my way up the stairs, take off my clothes, climb into bed beside Piper. I toss and turn and count the hours on the alarm clock, minute by minute by minute. Sometime after 4:30, I fall asleep.
The alarm sounds at six. I grumble, reach over, and push the buttons on the top of the clock until the noise stops. I turn away and pull the covers over my head, but it’s no use—I can’t fall back to sleep. Moping my way to the bathroom, I relieve myself and climb directly into the shower, stand under the hot water for a long time, head bent, eyes closed.
It’s close to seven when I walk into the kitchen. Piper is standing by the counter, pouring herself a cup of coffee. Gabby is sitting at the table, eating Froot Loops.
“I suppose I should say congratulations,” Piper says.
I look at her, not comprehending for a moment. Then I realize she’s congratulating me about my victory at the gag-order hearing—now the farthest thing from my mind.
“Thanks,” I say halfheartedly, changing places with Piper at the coffee machine.
“Jeez, what’s wrong with you? And why were you so late?”
I sigh. “I was at the office. I had to get something finished.”
“Why didn’t you just finish it here?”
My hackles go up instantly. The home-versus-office battle has been bitter ground for Piper and me for years. It’s the main reason Piper built out my home office for me, insisted I have remote computer access to my work server. It was a birthday gift and, in fairness, quite a grand one. The problem, as I explained to Piper more than once, is that, as one of the owners of the firm, I have to be physically present at my office downtown to lead my troops.
“Mick. Did you hear me? I need you to take Gabby to school this morning. I’m meeting Julie for an early yoga class.”
“Huh? Yeah, I heard. That’s fine. I’d love to take Gabby to school,” I say, mustering enthusiasm that I don’t actually feel for anything right now. I wink at Gabby as I say it. She smiles perfunctorily, the regent acknowledging her serf, then returns to her cereal.
Two hours later I walk into the firm’s reception area. Tommy’s there, talking to Angela. I interrupt them, tell Tommy, “We have a problem. Come on.” I pass Tommy and lead him into my office. “Close the door,” I say. A minute later I’m sitting behind my desk, and Tommy is across from me in one of the guest chairs.
“What’s up?”
I take a breath. “There’s a tape.” Tommy looks at me, not understanding. “Yesterday, someone—an old woman, according to Katrina—dropped off a videotape for my eyes only. It shows the back of Jennifer Yamura’s house on the day of her murder. It shows who went in and out that day.”
Tommy’s mouth opens, and I see his hands tighten on the arms of the chair. He looks at me, stone-faced. He waits a beat, then asks, “Is there something you want to say to me?”
“No.” I’m nowhere near ready to talk about what’s on the tape.
Tommy glances out the window behind me, then looks back at me. “So. Now what?”
“Now? I make damn sure David Hanson pays whoever delivered that tape whatever they want to make sure the video never sees the light of day.”
“It’s blackmail?”
“What else?”
Tommy doesn’t answer, and we stare at each other. “I guess that’s it, then.” He slaps the arms of the chair, stands, and leaves without looking back.
“Close the door,” I say. Tommy hesitates, then closes the door a little too hard.
I stare at the door, resigned to a fact I’d come to terms with a long time ago: that I no longer understand my brother and probably never will again.
When Tommy came home after his stint in prison for beating up the cop in Florida, he didn’t seem as restless as he’d been. It was almost as though going to jail had calmed him in some way.
He’d settled back into the lumberyard job of his youth, making decent money and even dating Rachel, a nice young woman from Lancaster. For two years everything went smoothly. There was even talk of a wedding.
Then one day I was sitting behind my desk at the DA’s office when I got a phone call from her. She asked if Tommy was visiting me in Philadelphia. She hadn’t seen him in almost two weeks. Neither had his bosses at the lumberyard.
I drove to Lancaster, got into Tommy’s apartment, and quickly determined he hadn’t been home in a long while. There was little I could do but wait. Finally, Tommy turned up in jail in Camden, New Jersey. It turned out he’d painted a strip club’s parking lot with the blood of two other patrons. One of the victims was the nephew of the town’s mayor.
As I would only learn years later, the guys Tommy pulverized had been in the process of raping a woman in their van. Tommy passed by, heard what was going on, opened the van’s side door—the creeps hadn’t even bothered to lock it—and gone to town on the assailants.
Things turned out worse than they had to for Tommy. In sentencing him, the judge never took into account that Tommy had prevented a rape because Tommy never said a word about it. The rape victim ran before the police arrived and never came forward about what happened. Tommy himself never explained why he attacked the two men. He wouldn’t even talk to the lawyer the court appointed to represent him. Or me, for that matter. He just sat back and let it all come crashing down on his head.
The sentence was five years. Tommy took the first plea the prosecutor shat on him. He left the courtroom as he’d entered that day, in an orange jumpsuit, leg manacles, and handcuffs. He glanced back at me only once, just before they took him out the door. It took me the whole drive back to Philadelphia to figure out the look in his eyes, but I eventually realized what it was: relief. Like he’d gotten what he deserved. I paced my apartment the rest of the day, alternately crying and raging at my brother.
“For what?” I’d shouted. “What do you think you did that you deserve this?”