[Sasha McCandless 10.5] The Humble Salve Read online

  Naya managed a thin grin. “She grabbed her purse, mumbled that she wasn’t even sure Wally’s statement had meant that he’d killed Stone, and rushed out the door.”

  Naya leaned against the wall, shaking her head in disbelief.

  Sasha glanced out the window at the striated sky. Pink and orange stripes shot through the clouds as the sun set. Connelly would be feeding the kids dinner about now—unless he’d made good on his threat to go to the lake without her.

  She shut down her computer and picked up her own purse then crossed the room to join Naya at the door.

  “I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised that she had a courage deficit. She just acted within her nature. We knew what Mackenzie Lane was when she walked in here: she’s self-centered, ambitious, and insecure.”

  Naya turned her head. “What—a leopard doesn’t change its spots?”

  “Not this leopard.”

  “At least you can still head up to the lake tonight.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “You can, right? Your statement’s basically finished.”

  “It’s finished.”

  They walked to Naya’s office. Sasha waited while Naya gathered her things and turned out her light, then they headed toward the exit together.

  “Can you and Carl still make the movie?”

  “We could. But I can’t dangle the pre-season game in front of that man’s nose and then pull it away. I gave my tickets to Caroline.”

  Sasha grimaced. “Sorry.”

  Naya waved away the apology. “There’ll be other esoteric films. Carl’s making his buffalo chicken dip for me. I’ll survive.”

  They stopped at the sidewalk.

  “Thanks again for staying. You didn’t have to.”

  “You’d have done it for me. Have fun at the lake.”

  Sasha watched Naya walk around the back of the building to the small parking lot. Then, instead of turning right and beginning the short walk home, she crossed the street to hail a cab.

  6

  “Visiting hours are over,” the corrections officer informed her in a bored tone.

  She bit down on her lower lip and thought. She was going to have to talk her way in.

  She’d tried to call in a favor. She’d spent the hour-long cab ride working through the contacts in her phone. But number after number rolled straight to voicemail.

  Every soul she knew in the police department, the prosecutor’s office, and the corrections department had been unavailable. It was, after all, the Steeler’s first televised game of the year. The fact that it wouldn’t count for the season was entirely irrelevant.

  The guard stared at her blankly while she sized him up. She suspected he would be immune to lawyerly bluster—he probably received a healthy dose every day from defense attorneys visiting their incarcerated clients.

  When in doubt, go with the unvarnished truth and appeal to his better nature, she decided. It seemed to work for Finn when he wanted an extra cookie.

  She smiled sheepishly. “I realize it’s past visiting hours. And I’m really sorry if this makes extra work for you, but I have to see Wally Stewart.”

  He pressed his lips together in a firm line. She could sense he was about to tell her to beat it before he lost his temper, but then his expression shifted.

  He blinked and cocked his head. “Why?”

  “Why?” she echoed.

  “Why do you have to see Stewart?”

  She looked into his questioning brown eyes for a beat before she answered. “Because he tried to kill me.”

  One eyebrow shot up the man’s forehead but he didn’t say a word.

  “He tried to kill me, and now he’s up for parole. I’m submitting a statement to the parole board, but I just need to see if he’s changed.”

  That earned her a caustic laugh. “I can tell you right now, he hasn’t.”

  “You know him?”

  He shook his head. “No better than I know any of the rest of them. But ninety-nine percent leave here the same way they were when they came in.”

  “But there’s that one percent—”

  “Yeah, they leave worse.”

  She puffed out a frustrated breath. “You’re probably right. I don’t think he’s capable of changing. But here’s the thing: I’m the only victim who plans to oppose his release next week. Everyone else has forgiven him. They’re not dummies; they’re both doctors. So, I just have to see for myself. Please. I’ll keep it short.”

  He squinted at her. “You the lawyer he stabbed?”

  She nodded, holding her breath. The deserted lobby was silent except for the hum of the HVAC system.

  After what felt like a day and a half, he gave a short nod as though he’d made up his mind. “Thought I recognized you. I played baseball with your brother.”

  “Sean?”

  “No, Patrick.”

  They were both silent for a moment. Her dead brother’s name hung on the air.

  Then the guard got off his stool and motioned toward the metal detector. “You wearing an underwire bra?”

  She lifted her dress off her shoulder and peeked at the strap, trying to remember. “Um, no.”

  “He’s got to agree to see you—Stewart, I mean.”

  “He’ll see me,” she said with a confidence she didn’t feel.

  As she handed over her bag and walked across the threshold, her hands shook and her legs wobbled.

  She hadn’t been sure she’d be able to talk her way in to see Wally Stewart. Now that she had, it dawned on her that she was about to be face to face with the man who’d stabbed her.

  And she didn’t have a plan.

  7

  Wally Stewart sat on the other side of the small metal table and grinned at her. She could see the guard who’d played baseball with Pat leaning against a column near the vending machine, just inside her peripheral vision.

  She’d imagined her visit with Wally taking place through a thick sheet of glass, via telephone, like in the movies. But the visiting room at SCI Fayette looked for all the world like an airport waiting area, albeit a deserted one.

  Rows of cafe tables lined the big open space. Molded plastic chairs faced the tables—for family members waiting their turn, she assumed. A colorful mural decorated one wall, near what looked to be a kids’ area. The rest of the room was institutional gray-green and gleaming. The smell of disinfectant permeated the room.

  It was a big space, but she was sharing four square feet of it with an attempted murderer, her attempted murderer. She felt claustrophobic.

  The guard cleared his throat loudly. The message was clear. The clock was ticking.

  “Thanks for seeing me,” she said to Wally. She was pleased that her voice sounded steady.

  He shrugged. “There’s not much else to do after dinner. I was just reading in my cell. What do you want, Sasha?”

  His face hadn’t changed. It was still thin and narrow, rodent-like, with dark eyes that darted from side to side, alert and intelligent. His receding hairline had continued to recede during his time behind bars. Aside from the jumpsuit, he looked like the scientist he’d been before his arrest. He didn’t look like a remorseless killer.

  “I saw a friend of yours today.”

  “Oh?” he feigned disinterest. “Let me guess, Bodhi King.”

  Her eyes widened. “I did see him, actually. But that’s not who I meant. How did you—?”

  “You’re my second visitor of the day. Bodhi was out here earlier—during visiting hours. They exist, you know. He brought me some books to help me pass the time. Not that I expect I’ll be stuck in here much longer.” Wally laughed. “Good old Bodhi.”

  Bodhi’d acted within his nature, too. Forgiving and decent.

  “Did Mackenzie Lane pop in, too?” she asked sweetly.

  It was his turn to register surprise. “Mackenzie … she’s in town?”

  “You mean you didn’t know? After all you did for her, she didn’t even come to see you? That’s rude.”r />
  His face darkened but his voice was even. “I don’t know what you mean. I wasn’t her lackey. That was Saul, remember?”

  “Sure, Saul was servicing her needs in the bedroom. But you were the one who did all the work. Stealing Bodhi’s computers, deleting those files, keeping tabs on Stone Fredricks. And she didn’t even have the courtesy to visit you?”

  At the mention of Stone Fredricks, Wally’s face went from an angry red to a furious deep purple.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Saul and Bodhi may not object to your release, but Mackenzie has good reason to want you to stay behind bars for a long, long time. Doesn’t she?” she whispered.

  He leaned over the table. “Whatever she said is a lie. She’s lying.” His voice was tight and choked, edging toward hysteria.

  “It must seem so unfair. You completed your anger management program, tutored other prisoners, went to church services. I heard you were even the most productive worker in the license plate factory three months in a row. The model prisoner. And now, it’s all going to go up in smoke because of one slip of the tongue to Mackenzie.”

  Wally Stewart’s frame vibrated with fury. “Did that bitch say I killed Stone Fredricks? It’s a lie.”

  Sasha watched him impassively.

  His voice rose. “Tell me what she said!”

  The guard shifted his weight as if he was about to walk over to the table. She held up one finger in his direction. Just give me one more minute.

  She stood and braced her hands against the top of the table, leaning over and coming nearly nose to nose with him. With her bare arms locked out, the long white scar from his scalpel was raised, prominent.

  He couldn’t resist. He glanced down at it for a millisecond. The hunger in his eyes told her everything she needed to know.

  Wally Stewart hadn’t been rehabilitated. He was the same feral killer who had risked the lives of innocent people and tried to kill everyone who could implicate him in his crimes.

  When he looked back at her, she smiled. “I’ll tell you this much, you’re going to need loads more reading material. Maybe you’ll even get to be employee of the decade in the license plate factory. You’ll have plenty of time for it.”

  He snarled and lunged across the table at her. His hands aiming for her throat. Before the guard’s heavy boots hit the floor as he took his first running steps toward them, she’d clamped her hands over his wrists, hard.

  She could have snapped the bones, leaving him with two broken wrists. It would have been laughably easy. Just a bit of pressure and a fast jerk on each side.

  But she didn’t.

  As the corrections officer reached the table, screaming and unholstering his baton, she took a deep breath, locked eyes with Wally Stewart and drove forward, snapping her neck toward him and smashing the thick bone of her forehead into his right cheek.

  Wally howled. The guard grabbed him and pulled him away from the table.

  Sasha smoothed her hair back with trembling hands.

  “You’ll want to take him to the infirmary,” she said.

  “Broken cheekbone?” the guard asked.

  “Probably. He’s going to have on helluva shiner on Monday morning.”

  A grin spread across the guard’s face. “A black eye, huh? That’ll be fun to explain to the parole judges, won’t it, Stewart?”

  Leo pulled up in front of the glass and cement block building and put the SUV in park, but let the engine idle. If he hadn’t known he was in front of a Department of Corrections facility, he’d have thought he’d wandered into a generic suburban office park. He peered into the entrance way, scanning the opening for a sign of his wife.

  After a few seconds, Sasha walked into view. She turned and waved to a uniformed guard then stepped out onto the pavement.

  The rush of relief that washed over him at the sight of her hit him like a wave at high tide. She’d insisted on the phone that she was fine, but he’d had to see her with his own eyes to believe it.

  Of all her damn-fool, reckless ideas, taking a cab to a maximum security prison to confront her attempted murderer, had to be one of her worst. And that was saying something.

  She slid into the passenger seat and shot him an apprehensive look.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi, yourself.”

  She twisted around to the back seat to smile at the twins. “Hi, babies.”

  “Hi, Mommy!” Finn enthused.

  “Why were you in prison?” Fiona asked, scrunching up her face.

  “Mommy wasn’t in prison, she was at prison,” Leo explained carefully as Sasha buckled her seatbelt. He pulled out. “And I’d like to know the answer to that myself.”

  She turned to face him. “Oh, come off it. You should be happy. This place is almost exactly halfway to Deep Creek Lake. You didn’t even have to detour to pick me up. And now we can have our weekend just like we’d planned.” She grinned at him.

  Was she joking? The plan had never been to swing by a prison to pick up his wife who’d just been assaulted by a man who’d tried to kill her once already. He gripped the wheel.

  “Sasha—”

  “Connelly, look. I needed to satisfy myself. I needed to be sure that Wally Stewart is still the same unrepentant, murderous sociopath he’s always been. And he is. A mild headache is a small price to pay for confirmation.”

  “You have a headache?”

  “Nothing that a stop at the drugstore won’t fix. Unless you have a pain reliever in the first aid kit. I head butted him.”

  Of course she did.

  “We should take you to the emergency room. You could have a concussion.”

  “I hit him in the cheekbone with my frontal bone. I don’t have a concussion.”

  He glanced over at her. “Did you break it?”

  “I think so.”

  “Either way, he’ll have a black eye on Monday.”

  She nodded. “Seems that way.”

  Despite himself, he felt a tiny smile starting to work its way across his mouth. “Sasha, honestly. You’re a trained lawyer. Couldn’t you have just written a compelling statement?”

  She softened at his teasing tone. “I did, I think. But, you know, a picture’s worth a thousand words. And Jeff, the guard who witnessed the altercation in the visiting room, was more than happy to write up a statement of his own.”

  “That poor man. You’ve doomed him to a weekend of paperwork.”

  She laughed. “Actually, he was kind of happy about it.”

  “Happy? I’ve met my fair share of corrections officers. There’s not a guard alive who’d be happy about paperwork.”

  “He would be if he’s a Giants fan for some inexplicable reason, and the woman who caused all the paperwork just happens to have gone to law school with the general counsel of the Giants organization. And she made a call and got him luxury box seats for when they play the Steelers in September.”

  He shook his head. “You’re impossible. Lucky for you I love you.”

  She turned serious and took his hand. “It is lucky for me. And I know it.”

  She stretched across the front seat and planted a kiss by his ear. As she settled back into her seat, Finn and Fiona squealed in amusement at the display of affection.

  He relaxed his grip on the steering wheel and hit the button to turn on the radio. She was who she was. He’d known it when he’d married her; he could hardly claim to be surprised by it now.

  8

  “Coffee?” Connelly asked in a whisper as he silently closed the sliding door and joined her on the deck.

  “No thanks.”

  He stood, motionless, a mug in each hand and gaped at her. “Seriously?”

  “Of course not, you big dolt.” She took the mug from his left hand and cupped her cold hands around it, letting the heat from the drink warm her skin.

  “That was close. I was thinking a hostile enemy must’ve replaced my wife with a sleeper agent. You might have ended up at the bottom of the l
ake.” He laughed and joined her at the railing to wait for the sun rise.

  It was a cool, cloudy morning, and the sky and the lake were both slate blue. As the bands of orange and pink and yellow crawled across the sky, Sasha inhaled the heady scent of her coffee and nestled into Connelly’s side to drink in the quiet moments before the sun, the world, and her children were fully awake.

  Connelly stared at the horizon and sipped his coffee. His shoulders and face had lost their characteristic tension. The lake was one of the few places where he genuinely relaxed and dropped his guard. She imagined the high-tech, invisible, and nearly impenetrable security system installed around the perimeter was responsible for his easy state of mind.

  Mocha bounded up the stairs from the fenced area of the yard with Java on his heels.

  “Someone should tell that cat he’s not a dog,” Connelly remarked.

  Java wound his tail around his bare ankles and purred.

  “What? And deprive Mocha of his best faux puppy playmate?” She bent and scratched the dog’s belly. The breeze coming off the lake ruffled his fur and her hair.

  When Mocha had melted into a puddle of snoozing canine satisfaction, she stood. She turned away from the rising sun to face Connelly. “I owe you an apology.”

  “Probably.”

  “Probably?” she interrupted her planned speech in her confusion. “What does that even mean?”

  “I’m sure there’s some wrong you’ve committed that you feel bad about—we did run out of toothpaste last week. Or are you sorry that you detoured to a prison last night?” His voice was light, amused.

  She drew herself up to her full, meager height. “I’m being serious. I lost my temper about those pictures you sent Duc … your dad,” she said, forcing herself to acknowledge his relationship to the man.

  His eyes stopped twinkling, and he nodded. “It’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay. I mean, I was mad, and I still am. It scares me to think about him looking for a relationship with the kids someday. And you should have told me first. When you apologized, I wasn’t ready to hear it.”

  She paused and searched his face before going on.