Chapter 8 - Linda’s Last Hand
The lockup beneath Courtroom 4B had walls of damp, whitewashed brick that had been laid when Chester A. Arthur was president. There was no natural light, only three bare hundred-watt bulbs caged in iron wire that hummed with a low, brown frequency that set a man’s fillings on edge.
Linda Sterling sat on a wooden bench bolted to the mortar.
Her silk dress was ruined now, grayed at the hem by the sawdust and disinfectant that the county janitors used to clean up after the morning drunk tank. Her silver hair had come completely undone, hanging in thin, oily wisps across her forehead, but her chin was still tilted up at that impossible, aristocratic angle that had terrified three generations of country club waitstaff.
Beside her stood Leonard Vance, his camel-hair coat folded over his arm like a waiter’s towel, his eyes bloodshot from twelve hours of uninterrupted failure.
The heavy iron door swung open, and I stepped through.
"I have nothing to say to you, Arthur," Linda said, her voice dry, raspy, but still carrying that cold, venomous superiority that money leaves behind like grease on brass. "Leonard is filing an emergency writ of habeas corpus with the federal district court in Springfield. We will be out before the six o'clock news."
"No, Linda," Leonard Vance said, his voice small, flat, and hollow. "We won't."
She turned her head sharply toward her lawyer, her eyes flashing with a sudden, vicious spark. "What did you say?"
"The federal clerk rejected the petition twenty minutes ago," Leonard whispered, not looking her in the eye. "Judge Martinez unsealed the search warrant affidavits. The media has the footage from the kitchen. It’s already on the wire. Every television station from Boston to Albany is running the clip of Mark... of Mark with the paring knife."
He paused, swallowing hard, his throat clicking in the silence of the cell.
"The board of trustees of the Sterling Foundation just convened an emergency telephone session," the lawyer continued, his voice trembling slightly. "They have removed you from the presidency, Linda. They have frozen the corporate accounts and retained an independent audit firm to review every disbursement made to Dr. Bradley’s clinic since 2017."
Linda’s hands clutched the rough wool of her skirt. The diamond rings on her left hand dug into the fabric until the setting on her three-carat sapphire snapped with a tiny, sharp *clink*.
"They can't do that," she breathed, her face graying into the color of wet lime. "My husband... my husband’s grandfather endowed that entire foundation. They cannot remove a Sterling from the chair."
"There are no more Sterlings, Linda," I said, stepping closer until the shadow of my hat fell across her knees. "There is only a defendant in cell 4B who is going to spend the next twenty years in MCI-Cedar Junction, and an accessory who is going to learn how to wear state-issue denim at the women’s facility in Framingham."
"You did this," she hissed, rising from the bench, her fingers curling into claws as she lunged toward me, only to be brought up short by the iron chain connecting her ankles. "You planned this. You brought those flowers... you came to my house knowing what you were going to do."
"I brought yellow tea roses, Linda," I told her. "Because yellow roses mean friendship and new beginnings. Emily liked them when she was a little girl. If your son had opened the door, shaken my hand, and asked me to sit down for a cup of tea, we would have talked about the crib I was building in my garage. We would have talked about whether the baby’s nursery needed another coat of primer."
I leaned down until my face was three inches from hers, so close she could smell the cold rain on my collar and the mint lozenge I had taken in the elevator.
"You built this house, Linda," I whispered. "You laid every brick of it when you paid off that coroner in Lake George to bury Clara Hensley’s baby in an unmarked plot. You laid another course of brick when you had that crooked doctor write a letter saying my daughter was crazy. All I did was walk through the front door and turn on the lights so the neighbors could see the mold."
"Arthur," she gasped, her hands shaking, her aristocratic composure finally shattering into small, jagged shards of pure, naked panic. "Arthur... listen to me. We have resources. In Zurich... there are accounts that the foundation doesn't know about. Three million dollars in non-registered bonds. I can have the certificates transferred to a trust for Emily. For the child. She will never have to work. The boy... the boy can go to Exeter. He can go to Harvard. He can have everything a Sterling was meant to have."
I stood up straight, adjusted my coat, and looked at Leonard Vance.
"Counselor," I said. "Did you hear that?"
Leonard Vance closed his eyes and let out a long, shuddering breath. "I heard it, Arthur."
"That’s an attempt to bribe a material witness under Section 201 of the penal code," I said, checking my pocket watch. It was eleven-forty-five. "Add it to the grand jury package, Leonard. Or I’ll have Elena Torres name you as an unindicted co-conspirator before the afternoon session begins."
The lawyer didn't argue. He turned on his heel, tapped the iron door with the knuckles of his hand, and walked out into the corridor without looking back at the woman who had paid his firm four hundred thousand dollars a year for two decades.
Linda sat down on the bench.
The cold of the whitewashed brick seemed to enter her shoulders all at once, collapsing her frame until she looked like an old, withered woman who had gotten lost in a subway terminal.
"Arthur," she whimpered, her hands resting uselessly in her lap. "Please."
"Emily asked you 'please' yesterday afternoon, Linda," I said, my hand on the heavy iron latch of the door. "She was sitting on your imported Italian tile, holding her belly, and she said 'please don't let him hit me again.' Do you remember what you told her?"
Linda didn't answer. She stared down at her ruined sapphire ring on the dirty floor.
"You told her that she shouldn't do anything to embarrass the family," I said.
I swung the heavy door shut.
May you like
The brass bolt slid into the strike plate with a heavy, final *chunk* that echoed down the long, empty corridor of the county lockup, cutting her off from the sun, from her name, and from the world she had spent fifty years buying with other people’s blood.
***
