Shooting Starr

“I’ll make some calls, but I’m not promising anything.”

“That’s fine. And Charly…thanks.”

He disconnected but sat where he was for a long time, fidgety and keyed-up, slapping the cell phone against the palm of his hand. He’d done the right thing, turning them in, he knew he had. It wasn’t his affair, and Charly was right, he ought to stay the hell out of it. So why was it he couldn’t get her out of his mind? Her. All three of them, really. Except, it wasn’t Mary Kelly’s scared brown eyes or even little Emma Vasily’s big black ones he saw whenever he shut his eyes, as if the backs of his eyelids had been tiny TV screens. Uh-uh. No, it was her face that haunted him, pale and frozen in the shadows of the back seat of a police cruiser, the silvery slash of her eyes zeroing in on him, seeming to look right into his soul with mute and desperate appeal.

He was on I-95 somewhere south of Richmond when his cell phone tweedled at him from the no-hands holster mounted on the dash. He reached over and mashed the Receive button and hollered, “Yeah?” over the roar of highway noise.

“C.J., honey, that you?” Charly’s voice was distant and tinny.

His heart gave a little kick. He turned up the volume and yelled, “Yeah, Charly. What’d you find out?”

“Couple things. First thing is, she’s still not talking. Neither one of ’em is—the mother, either. So they’re both back in the pokey, and it looks like they might be there for a while. Judge Calhoun seems determined to keep ’em where they are until they give up the little girl.” She paused.

“And?” C.J. prompted. He kept his hands easy on the wheel, but a pulse was tapping hard against his belt buckle.

“She doesn’t want any help, C.J.—at least, not from you.”

“Did she say that?” He squinted at the ribbon of interstate rolling out ahead of him, though there wasn’t a speck of glare. “You got that straight from her? Not some other lawyer? You talked to her?”

He heard the gust of an exhalation. “In a word, C.J., yeah. What she actually said was that you’d done enough.” There was a long pause before Charly added gently, “She’s right, you know. Give it up, honey. It’s not your trouble, so don’t go spendin’ any more time stewin’ about it. You got other things to worry about—which reminds me, how’s that law degree comin’? When are you plannin’ on tackin’ up your shingle here with Troy and me?”

C.J. managed a grin, his first in quite a while. “Why would I want to do that? I’d have to live in Atlanta. Hell, might as well just shoot me now.”

Charly laughed. “Wait’ll you pass the bar, and then we’ll see about that. Atlanta’s where the action is, sugar.”

“Yeah, yeah—just don’t hold your breath.” His grin lasted about a second longer than it took him to disconnect. Then he took in air and huffed it out, waggled his shoulders like somebody’d just relieved him of a burdensome load.

Charly was right; it wasn’t any of his affair. He had a load to deliver, an exam to take. A semester to finish. A final to pass. A law degree to earn. A life to get on with.

As for a hijacker with a fairy-tale face and unforgettable eyes…well, he’d find a way to forget her. Somehow.

During the next five months or so C.J. concentrated hard on doing that, which, if nothing else, had a beneficial effect on his study habits. He got his law degree in June and spent the summer cramming for the bar exams, which he was scheduled to take the last week in September and as a matter of principle was determined to pass on the first try. He still had a lot to prove, mainly to himself.

What he mostly learned during that long, hot summer, in addition to a whole lot of law stuff, was that it was one thing to try to forget somebody and another to actually succeed.

His task wasn’t helped any by the fact that hardly a day went by he didn’t hear the name Caitlyn Brown or see her face on the nightly news—that same file footage of a handcuffed prisoner in a hooded sweatshirt being hustled into a police cruiser. It seemed to be one of those stories the media had sunk its teeth into and wouldn’t let go, and why not? It had everything: a mysterious billionaire, his ex-stripper wife, a beautiful young woman with connections to one of the most famous families on the planet, and, of course, a missing child.

Everyone with any connection at all to the case, no matter how dubious, had been interviewed over and over and over again, on the network morning shows and the primetime news magazines as well as the major network and cable news. Biography had done a two-hour piece on the former president, featuring his entire family and making a big deal of their Iowa farm beginnings. The tabloids trumpeted wild and improbable theories from their racks beside the grocery store checkout lines.

And night after night reporters stood in front of file photos of the red brick courthouse in South Carolina, faced the cameras and told the same story: Caitlyn Brown still wasn’t talking. The Today Show reported that office pools had sprung up around the country, and that betting on how long the holdout would continue was more popular than playing the lottery.

C.J. had taken to avoiding television sets the way certain celebrities and mob bosses avoided cameras.

That particular afternoon, though, he was a captive audience. He was in a truck stop in Virginia, having his usual truck-stop lunch—a club sandwich on white bread with potato salad and sweet tea—and no matter which way he turned there was a wall-mounted TV set looking down at him. Normally they’d be tuned to the Weather Channel or some sporting event or other, but today for some reason they all seemed to be set on CNN. And sure enough, there was the same reporter standing in front of the same damn red brick courthouse he’d been looking at for months, no doubt saying the same damn thing. At least the sound was turned off, and he didn’t have to read the closed-captioning if he didn’t want to. Stubbornly he pulled his eyes from the screen and scanned the dining room instead.

When he noticed every set of eyes in the room except his was riveted on those television sets, a chill ran down his spine. It reminded him of another bright and beautiful September morning not so long ago. The bite of club sandwich he’d just swallowed made a lump in his throat as he forced his eyes back to the television screen, dreading what he was about to see, preparing himself for unthinkable disaster.

The familiar white-on-black letters of the closed captioning darted across the bottom third of the picture:

“…the scene earlier today, as Caitlyn Brown and Mary Kelly Vasily left the courthouse to return to their jail cells under heavy police guard. It was the same scenario that has played out so many times before during the last months, only this time something went terribly, terribly wrong. As the two women, flanked by police officers, made their way down the courthouse steps, shots rang out….”

The words ticked on across the screen, but C.J. wasn’t watching them now. His eyes were riveted instead on the pictures behind them, jerky and incoherent pictures of unexpected violence captured live on videotape. Pictures of pushing and shoving and falling bodies, of horror-stricken faces, of arms waving and fingers pointing and mouths opened in silent shouts. The chill in his spine ran into his very bones. Around him the clatter of dining room sounds retreated to a humming silence.

The melee on the screen gave way to the reporter’s face, mouthing words. C.J. jerked his eyes back to the closed captioning.

“…on the exact number or condition of the injured at this time. We do have information that at least four people have been taken to a local hospital, but that has not been officially confirmed. Police and hospital personnel have refused to comment on reports from eyewitnesses. Repeat, these are unconfirmed reports, that at least one of the prisoners—one of the women—has been killed in this brutal attack.”

“Do police have any idea who might be responsible for the attack, Vicky?”

“As you can imagine, things are still pretty chaotic here, Tim. It does appear the shots were fired from the bell tower of a church across the street from the courthouse—that’s about half a block down from the police station—but as far as we know no traces of the gunman or a weapon have been found.”

“Any indication as to whether this was a random shooting? Or if it was deliberate, who the intended target might have been?”

“No, Tim, and police are refusing to speculate—”

“’Scuse me, hon’, were you needin’ your check?”

“What?” C.J. looked down at the waitress, frowning in confusion; he didn’t know when or how he’d come to be standing up. He blinked what was left of his club sandwich into focus and mumbled, “Yeah, that’d be great…thanks.”

His skin felt clammy. Barely aware of what he was doing, he dug his wallet out of his hip pocket and randomly selected some bills, which he thrust at the waitress with a muttered “Keep the change.” Next thing he knew he was outside, gulping air like a netted fish and soaking the September heat into his chilled body. Ninety degrees, it had to be, and it wasn’t warm enough. He felt he was never going to be warm enough again.

You just don’t know what it is you’ve gone and done.

He felt as though he might throw up but made it to his truck before the shakes hit him. He climbed into his seat and spent the next five minutes or so fighting for control the way most men of his acquaintance did, those that weren’t smokers: he swore. And swore. And swore some more. When he ran out of cusswords, some of which he’d never used before in his life, he ran a hand over his face and reached for his cell phone.

“Charly?” he croaked when he heard his sister-in-law’s voice. His own was probably unrecognizable, so he added for good measure, “It’s me, C.J. You heard?”

“Yeah, I did, sugar, just a little while ago. Troy called me.” Charly’s voice was low and urgent, like a conspirator’s.

“They said somebody’d been killed, some more injured, but they aren’t saying who. You don’t—”

“No. I don’t know any more than that, either. I’ve been in court all morning, I just got back in the office a little while ago. There’s supposed to be a press conference at the hospital any minute now.” Her voice turned sharp. “C.J., honey, don’t you go and blame yourself for this.”

I’m not blamin’ you, Mr. Starr….

“I didn’t believe her,” he muttered, shaking his head like a dazed boxer. “She told me he’d do it and I didn’t— I thought she was just—”

“She, who? He, who? Do what?”

“She told me he was going to kill his wife, but I just thought she was…you know—”

“Who, you mean Vasily?” Charly lowered her voice even further, as if she thought somebody was going to overhear. “You think that’s who did this? My God, C.J.—”

“Who the hell else?” He spat the words into the phone.

There was a pause before she said, cautiously at first, “I know the husband is always the first suspect, but that’s assuming Mrs. Vasily was the target, and even if she was—” she was arguing, now, with herself as much as him “—my God, C.J., the man’s a billionaire. A friend of the governor. He’s had dinner at the White House. He’s—”

He is also a charming and intelligent, violent and dangerous—very dangerous—man.

“I don’t care who he is, Vasily set it up.” C.J.’s voice was stony. “You can bet on it.”

“Even if he did, there’s no way on God’s green earth they’re ever gonna prove—”

“I know.” He cut her off, calmer now, his brain beginning to function again. “Hey, look, Charly—I gotta go. Do me one favor, would you? I’m going to try and find me a news station on the radio, but if you find out anything, could you let me know? Call me on my cell.”

“What are you going to do? You’re not fixin’ to go down there now, are you?”

There was a long pause, and then: “I have to, Charly. I need to find out what’s going on.”

He heard a sigh. “C.J., you’re just gonna insist on blamin’ yourself for this, aren’t you?”

The only reply he could manage was a sharp and painful laugh as he disconnected.

He called his dispatcher and told her she’d need to find another driver to pick up his load, then fiddled with the radio for a few minutes trying to find an all-news station. Antsy and impatient to be on the road, he gave it up and settled for a golden oldies station he knew would have updates on the hour, then rolled his Kenworth out of the truck stop and back onto the interstate, heading south.

A long hour later his cell phone tweedled, interrupting tumultuous and totally useless thoughts. He mashed the connect button and barked, “Yeah!”

“C.J., I thought you’d want to know—they’re having that press conference at the hospital. It’s still going on, with all the questions and such, but they’ve made their statements. The official toll is, three injured, two critically, one dead….”

“Yeah?” He stared at the road ahead, flexed his fingers on the steering wheel. Preparing himself. As if he could.

“C.J., honey, it was Mrs. Vasily who was killed. The mother. Mary Kelly Vasily…”

A cool rush of feeling blew through him, like a breeze through a stuffy house. He nodded, though there wasn’t anybody to see, and his mind filled with images: Mary Kelly’s face, Southern magnolia-type pretty, almost lost in billows of fluffy red-brown hair…a tentative smile as she shook his hand and murmured polite phrases like a well-brought-up child…lips forming No! as she shook her head in fear and rejection…then quiet eyes, accepting smile. I’m not blamin’ you, Mr. Starr.

But the feeling, that cool, lightening wind in his soul—he knew what it was, and it shamed him so that he slammed the doors of his mind to it, tried every way he could to deny it. Shaken, he tried to explain to himself why he should feel relieved when a good woman had just been killed. But he was. Relieved it wasn’t Caitlyn Brown who’d died.

“C.J., are you there?”

“Yeah.”

“Honey, I’m sorry—I know how you must be feelin’. I just feel so bad for that little girl….”

“What about the others?” He made his voice hard and clipped off the words, leaving no room for emotions. “You said two were critical?”

“One of the guards was shot in the arm—he’s not serious. The other took a bullet in the chest and is still in surgery.

His chest tightened; he forced a deep breath. “Caitlyn?”

“They just said her condition is critical. No details. C.J., there’s no point in you going down there. There’s not a thing you can do except get yourself into trouble.”

His vision shimmered. He blinked the highway back into focus and mumbled, “I just want to talk to her.”

“How? They’re never gonna let you in there, you know that, don’t you? I mean, seriously—a stranger? After somebody just tried to kill her? The president’s niece? I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve got the Secret Service, the FBI—”

She broke off, then was silent for so long C.J. prompted, “Charly?” and was ready to start mashing buttons on his cell phone, thinking maybe they’d got disconnected the way cell phone calls do sometimes.

“C.J., I’m gonna have to call you back, okay?” She sounded rushed and distracted. “Just…don’t do anything until you hear from me. Promise? This is your lawyer speakin’ now.”

“Yeah,” he grunted, “I promise.” He disconnected and settled back, trying hard to concentrate on driving and on not letting himself think about what critical condition might mean. Trying not to think about a fairy-tale face, silvery eyes, a light-as-a-feather touch. One thing he didn’t have to try very hard to avoid was thoughts of that exquisite face and graceful body bloody and torn…ruined by violence. His mind cowered and protected itself from those images, like eyes avoiding the sun.

Though it seemed longer, it was barely half an hour later when his phone chirped at him again.

“C.J., it’s me.” Charly sounded out of breath and in a hurry. “Hey, I’m gonna meet you there, okay? If you get there—”

“Meet me there…”

“The hospital. If you get there before I do, sit tight. Okay? Don’t do anything until you hear from me, you hear?”

“Charly, what’re you up to? I don’t think I’m gonna be needing a lawyer for this.”

“Maybe, maybe not. But I’ve got somebody who can get you in to see Caitlyn Brown.”

The woman in the hospital bed stirred. Her fingers plucked at the sheets, rearranging them needlessly across her chest.

“The thunderstorm…” Caitlyn murmured, and closed her eyes. After a moment she asked in a slow, drug-thickened voice, “What is it you want? Absolution? You have it, okay? I told you, I don’t blame you for anything. In fact, I suppose it was bound to happen…someday. When you go against violent people… I just…” Her voice cracked and dropped to a whisper; her lips quivered. She turned her face away. “I didn’t expect it to come quite this way.”

C.J. cleared his throat and leaned forward. There were so many things he wanted to ask her…so many things he wanted to say. He didn’t know where to start, so he murmured, “What way did you think it was gonna come?”

Her eyes crisscrossed him like searchlights, not silvery, now, but liquid and lost. Then, incongruously, she laughed, a soft ironic chuckle. “Well, for one thing, I never expected to be blind.”

Chapter 4

Caitlyn listened to the silence and felt anger rising. Once, she had treasured silence, regarded it as a gift, and on those rare occasions when she found herself immersed in it, had taken pleasure in the experience as she might in a warm bath, with scented oils and wine and candlelight. Now silence was her enemy, unknown menace lurking in the darkness beyond the firelight. Silence made her feel alone, and afraid.

But it was not in her makeup to give in to fear, and at the moment her only weapon against it seemed to be anger.

“Say something, damn you.” She shifted again, carefully. Despite the pain medication she’d been given, skyrockets had a tendency to go shooting around in her skull whenever she moved.

She heard a sound—the clearing of a throat—and then the voice, Southern and soft as a summer evening. She’d liked his voice the first time she’d heard it, she recalled. She hadn’t expected to hear it ever again.

“Sorry. Guess I don’t know what to say.”

Vaguely ashamed, she aimed a frown in the direction of the voice. “You knew, didn’t you? About me being blind. They must have told you.”

There was another cough and under it a faint sandy sound. Shoes. No, boots…sliding over a vinyl floor. He must be uncomfortable; he’d shifted position, perhaps leaned forward in the chair. How did she know he was sitting? Because his voice came from a level near her own. She was pleased with herself for being able to deduce so much.

“They told me you’re damn lucky to be alive,” he said, and there was a difference in the voice now. Something harder, denser. Emotion, certainly, but what kind? She made a mental grimace at the discovery that she wasn’t nearly as good at deciphering emotional landscapes as she was physical. “They said a hair’s breadth of difference and that bullet would have blown part of your head off.”

The brutality of his words surprised her. With a bitter smile she answered in kind, “Yeah, but instead it only grazed me a little and hit Mary Kelly in the heart. So, she’s dead, and I have some minor brain swelling that just happened to involve my optic nerve. What luck.”

She heard the shifting sounds again. “They said the blindness might not be permanent. That your eyesight might come back as the injury heals, or if it doesn’t, there’s surgery they can maybe try later on.”

“That’s what they say.” Caitlyn closed her eyes and carefully turned her head away from the man sitting beside her. Might…maybe. She felt so tired…and controlling her face and her voice took so much energy. If only he would go away. If only she could relax and let the tears come.

“Do you remember anything about, uh, the shooting?” His voice was raspy now, and again it vexed her that she couldn’t read the emotions behind it.

She shook her head—bad move—and fought down the inevitable waves of nausea.

“You tried to shield her—Mary Kelly. Did you know that?” Oh, it was anger in his voice—definitely. It came through loud and clear, although he was obviously trying to hide it. It bewildered her, his anger, even as she felt a tiny flicker of triumph for having recognized it. “You threw yourself in front of her. That’s why the bullet that struck her in the chest grazed you first.”

“Who told you that?” The intense emotions were becoming too much for her. She felt desperately close to crying; there were strange sounds inside her head, and a panicky tightness in her chest. “The police? What…did they say…do they know—”

“You knew, didn’t you? You knew Mary Kelly was the target, the second you heard the shots. You tried to tell me—”

The noises in her head had become a cacophony. Through them she heard footsteps, quick and purposeful, and C.J.’s voice, seeming to rise and float above her.

“It was Vasily, wasn’t it? You told me he’d kill her. You told me, and I didn’t—”

She felt a rush of air. Hands touched her, gentle and cool.

“Look. I’m sorry….” She heard C.J.’s voice, moving away from her. “I’m sorry….”

Quiet came. And peace. With a grateful whimper she sank into the oblivion of sleep.

Summoning his courage, C.J. faced the people waiting at the nurses’ station.

“I’m sorry,” he said, squinting with the effort it took to meet their eyes. “I didn’t mean to get her upset. I just wanted to say—” He lifted a hand and let it drop. Shook his head and said it again. “I’m sorry.” Lately it seemed as if he’d been saying that a lot, both out loud and to himself.

Two of the four people there at the counter—a handsome, middle-aged couple—nodded their heads in mute understanding. It was to them he’d spoken—Caitlyn’s parents. Of the others, C.J.’s sister-in-law and lawyer, Charly, clapped him on the shoulder and murmured supportive monosyllables. Special Agent Jake Redfield of the FBI, C.J.’s brother Jimmy Joe’s in-law, leaned against the counter and took in everything with quiet and watchful eyes. He was a melancholy-looking man with stubbled jaws, and the only one present wearing a suit.

A nurse came from the glass-partitioned cubicle where Caitlyn lay, screened from view behind a curtain. “She’ll sleep for a while,” she said in her high-pitched voice with its thick upstate South Carolina accent. “If you want to, you can go down to the cafeteria, get a cup of coffee, somethin’ to eat.”

Caitlyn’s mother gripped her husband’s arm as if drawing strength from that touch, and asked the nurse in her quiet Midwestern voice, “Is it all right if I sit with her?”

The nurse nodded. “Sure. Go on in.”

Watching Chris Brown walk away from him, C.J. thought he could see where her daughter had come by her looks. Not her grace, though, that quality of lightness that made Caitlyn seem, in his memory, at least, fairy-like…not quite real. Though tall and slender like her daughter, Chris Brown moved with a coltish—he could think of no other word for it—awkwardness that was in no way unattractive—and which made her seem much younger than he knew she had to be. But her face was the same flawless oval as Caitlyn’s, her hair almost the same shade of sun-streaked blond, but worn long and sleek and fastened at the nape of her neck with a clip of some kind. She had the same colored eyes, too—a clear and pale gray-blue—but without that heart-stopping flash of silver C.J. couldn’t seem to forget.

Charly glanced at her watch. “Well. I think I’m gonna go see about that cup of coffee. Any of you-all wanna join me?”

Caitlyn’s father smiled the kind of smile that probably came naturally to him no matter the circumstances, and shook his head. C.J. cleared his throat and said, “I think I’m gonna stick around here for a while.”

Nobody asked Jake Redfield what his plans were; he’d already gone wandering over to join the uniformed police officer seated in a chair beside the door to Caitlyn’s cubicle. Charly gave everyone a “See you later,” and went off to the elevators, and C.J. found himself alone with the man whose only child he’d almost gotten killed.