Blow Out

“But he wasn’t thinking about Fleurette.”

She shook her head. “No. When we got back to his apartment, he—” She looked over at her parents. Thankfully they were still six feet away, facing the window now, their backs to Savich and their daughter.

She lowered her voice and Savich had to lean down to hear her. “He jumped on me the instant we got through the door. Danny was always horny, but this time it was different. He was excited, not just about sex, but about something else. And it wasn’t Fleurette. How could it be?”

Savich’s heart began to pound slow steady beats.

“We made love on the living room floor.” She said this in an even lower whisper, her eyes on her mother’s back. “Then Danny got up and ran to the kitchen, opened a bottle of wine, and poured us each a glass. He toasted me, grinning like a loon. I’ll never forget the look on his face. He said, ‘Annie, I’m going to be rich.’ And I said, well, sure, Danny, you’re smart and blah blah blah—I don’t remember the rest of it. I said something about was he going to take a client on the side. Truth is, I was cold and wanted to put my clothes back on. But there he was, expecting me to drink the wine, and so I did.”

She might be twenty-three, Savich thought, but she was still so very young, so insecure in her youth.

“Danny shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘this is something else entirely.’ But he wouldn’t say what. And he grabbed my hand and dragged me into the bedroom.” Again, her voice was a whisper. “We did it again before he finally fell asleep.”

“He said nothing about what this something else might be? No hints? Nothing else at all?”

Annie shook her head. “No, I was lying there listening to him snore. When I woke up the next morning, it was late. I put on one of his T-shirts and went into the kitchen. He was standing there, looking at the TV, and he was saying, ‘My God, my God, my God’—over and over. We stood there and watched the news about Justice Califano’s murder. I couldn’t believe it. Danny looked like he’d been kicked in the gut, like his world had ended. But then everything changed on his face, and his posture became really straight. He got taller, I swear it, he stood there and got taller.”

“You realize now that he’d come to a decision of some sort? That he realized he could use what he knew?”

“Yes, I can see that now. Poor Danny. It sure didn’t take him long, did it?”

“Evidently not.” Savich knew there was more, but not in her conscious mind, not yet.

“Then what did he say?”

“I asked him what the hell was going on with him, but he shook his head at me and said I had to leave, he had stuff to do, real important stuff.”

“I was so mad. I yelled at him that I wasn’t going to do his laundry for him anymore. I went in the bedroom, got dressed and left, didn’t say another word to him.”

“Where was he when you left?”

“I heard him moving around in the kitchen. I think he was on his cell phone.”

“You didn’t hear anything he said on his cell?”

She frowned, clasped his hand even harder, but slowly shook her head. “No. I remember how his voice fell, then it rose, but I was really so mad that I just slammed out of his apartment and went back to mine.”

“But you went over again Sunday morning.”

She was chewing on her lips. They were chapped. “Yeah, I did.”

“Why?”

“I guess I wanted to know what was really happening with him. I suppose I was worried about Fleurette again. Have you ever seen Sonya McGivens, Justice Wallace’s law clerk? Have you seen how she dresses when she’s outside the Court?”

He was hard-pressed not to smile. “Yes, I have.”

“She works out,” Annie Harper said. “She really works out hard. Over at Interior, nobody works out.” And she turned her face away from him, squeezed his hand until she was nearly cutting off the circulation, and began to weep.

Savich waited, trying to comfort her, when her mother turned toward them, the tortured look on the woman’s face painful to see. He nodded to her and mouthed, “Annie will be all right.”

When Annie quieted again, Savich said, “I would like to hypnotize you, Annie.”

“No, there’s no way you’re going to do any hocus-pocus on my daughter! She’s been through enough!”

Savich looked up at Mrs. Harper. “It’s a very safe way for me to help her remember things she can’t recall right now. Please remember, Mrs. Harper, Danny O’Malley was brutally murdered like Justice Califano. If Annie can remember more, it could help us immensely. You and your husband could be present, of course.”