Chapter One
“Don’t let the anxiety of freedom consume you.”
Attorney Grady Donahue Fletcher clenched his teeth and
rehearsed what he’d say to his client, Victoria Morningstar. He’d won her
appeal and drove to pick her up at Gladstone Penitentiary. “At least you won’t
be placed in solitary.” That was worse.
Six months earlier Grady had phoned a reporter at the Los Angeles Globe. "Drew Barker.
Grady Fletcher here.”
“Ah, the lawyer. Calling about a tip?”
“I am. Here's something you can investigate. Tori
Morningstar, did she murder Irene Brennan?"
"I wrote that story many years back," the
journalist had said. “I assume you have new discoveries.”
"Fraud, illegal testimony. Do you want the story first?" A second
passed. "Otherwise, I'll call the Orange
County Guardian."
"Okay, okay. We want it."
Three days later Grady had a hand in writing the first
article in Drew Barker’s column. "The public labeled Tori Morningstar as
an undesirable. Not black and poor, but disfavored, accused, incarcerated, and
wrongly condemned. Her cellphone has been recovered. Her call to 911 identified
her voice and substantiated screams of the victim in the background. Could she
have beaten someone while speaking to dispatch at the same time?"
The reporter had written the second article.
"People who get their ideas about criminal lawyers from TV probably would
be disappointed in Grady Fletcher. He lacks flash but stands up straight, his
posture neither ramrod nor slouched. He
doesn't smoke, doesn't wear thousand dollar suits. His voice is soft and low, one of his assets.
He speaks truth with a voice inviting confidences."
As nice as that was, Grady’s stomach cramped over
pressure and strain from Drew Barker’s final article with the headline, Tori Morningstar, Released Today. Picked up by the online service, Newser, KTLA
and CBS Los Angeles, they planned to broadcast his arrival to escort his client
from Gladstone.
Tori’s decade-long prison sentence ended today but with
a sobering fear over tomorrow.
When was a July morning this hot? Grady balanced her
release papers on his lap as he rolled up one sleeve then the other while
gripping the damp steering wheel. Sweat blossomed on his throbbing forehead, wrapped like
a python[S-E1] ’s grip. He adjusted the dial for the AC
and embraced the challenge of helping another client get back on track. Embrace
and conquer. Or at least sound like it.
Grady didn’t necessarily believe in heaven, but
suppose such a place existed and he was eligible for entry when his time came? He
expected it’d look like a courtroom where he won appeals for deserving people.
The mobster’s daughter, Tori Rourke, took Morningstar
as her surname. She’d run from the Irish mob but couldn’t hide. With no
patience for those who leave its ranks, the mob had framed her. She’d spent a
decade at Gladstone.
His most recent client, Tyrone Marquis, black and poor,
worked at a poultry plant where he’d plucked, hacked, and processed thousands
of chickens. Marquis had written a bad check and committed a petty theft. The
court had handed him a twenty-year prison sentence. When Grady believed in the
falsely accused or excessively sentenced, he fought hard from a deep pit. He won
this man’s appeal.
Poor and black did not describe Tori, born into an
Irish crime family, but in essence, she was marginalized and excluded too.
Society detests any mobster association.
His cousin, Finbar Donahue, managed the trust accounts
for the Rourke offspring. In spite of Finn’s hostile relationship with the mob,
he’d followed Tori’s murder trial.
Finn had guilted Grady into appealing her case. “She’s
a fringe relative. Okay. Not by blood, but come on.” Finn’s words landed like
punches, sapped his resistance.
The closer he got to the maximum-security complex, the
more his heart pounded with blood pressure exploding like a grenade. Thump,
thump. How safe will she be when freed? He scrambled for his game face.
He turned off Highway 5 and onto the stark, industrial
City Drive of Orange, California. Sunlight reflected off a homeless man’s
shopping cart and the broken glass in the gutter. A jaywalker lunged across the
street. Grady swung the steering wheel to miss him, tires squealing over the
concrete. Ahead at the red stoplight, three kids, about the age of his son,
crossed the street on their way to school. They jabbered in Spanish but giggled
just like his son. A sharp-edged thought boiled up.
Grady’s rancorous custody battle continued
post-divorce, and he’d relocated to be closer to seven-year-old Shane. How long
would his job-hopping ex-wife stay in Long Beach? He stuffed a wishful dream to
coach soccer into the caverns of his mind.
Ahead, a sign marked the penitentiary run by the most
hard-hearted Godzillas of the human race. A shrill hiss grew to an ear-piercing
whistle. At its command, prisoners rose at sunrise and appeared at their cell
doors. Doors opened, and they stood on the threshold. “Right face.” All wheeled
to the right. “March!” Without energy, the inmates zombied along for two hours
of labor before breakfast. They made license plates, jeans, jackets, T-shirts,
and hats. They worked in the laundry room, kitchen, or in the sewing room where
they cut, basted, and stitched.
Color televisions, said to be available for viewing by
those who earned the privilege, amounted to one set per eighty offenders. In the
dayroom, they watched a nine-inch screen while seated on metal benches bolted
to the floor. Correctional officers held remote controls and flipped through
basic networks, sports, and educational channels. From there prisoners marched
to dinner, out in the yard, and then back to cramped stone cells.
On the bright side, according to his cousin Finn, Tori
took college classes. She’d spent her college years in prison but earned a
degree in restaurant management and planned to run a food truck.
Ahead, the Gladstone brooded on its hill. Beige stucco
rectangles, complete with a tower, perched on the banks of the dry Santa Ana
River bed. The penitentiary’s ten acres housed three and a half thousand inmates.
He passed a complex for foster children. A knot formed in his stomach over its
unfortunate location and similar architecture.
Grady’s experience with appeals was going on two
years, and the details of each stood sharp in his mind. Nothing blurred into
another. He slowed and checked his wristwatch. Nine o’clock, but a half hour early
wasn’t early enough to beat the crowd. He tried to steady his shaking hands as
he passed parked cars lining the curb. He looped twice before finding a space
big enough. In another time, a throng of citizens would have suggested a
terrible event such as the impending execution of a criminal or public
whipping. Thanks to news media, this sympathetic crowd celebrated release of a woman
who’d served a sentence for a crime she didn’t commit.
Grady stepped out of his Jeep, smoothed down his
grey-striped tie and adjusted the cuffs of his white shirt. He let out a breath,
spotted Drew Barker of the Los Angeles
Globe, and waved to the reporter who was
instrumental in sharing his discoveries
of fraud and illegal testimony. Other reporters and cameramen shifted and
rolled like an ocean of tipsy goodwill. Grady scanned over the waves for Tori
Morningstar.
She stood stiff at the high security entrance and
hugged a leather moto jacket wrapped over crossed arms. Dressed in her pre-incarceration
style, her defined muscles created a perfect fit for her silk blouse, In prison
she worked the heavy bag, labored hard so that she could protect herself in the
yard.
Grady slipped papers into the hands of a guard. “Good
morning, sir,” he said without another word, signed his clipboard, and rushed
to her side. “Tori. It’s okay to speak to reporters.” The whoop-whoop of a hovering
helicopter drew attention, and cameramen angled their equipment upward.
Beside him she swallowed hard and took a deep breath. “These
reporters helped. I’ll answer questions, but the publicity worries me.” She
froze where she stood, aware of the potential dangers ahead.
“I know.” Their gazes collided. Her eyes resembled
honey-brown gems. Fine cheekbones, a firm chin, and a mouth he found
disturbingly inviting. In the sunlight, her dark hair glowed chestnut. She’d
skinned her hair back from her face so tightly, it had to hurt.
Drew Barker pushed his way in front of the others.
“Victoria Morningstar.” The reporter in his sixties, with a round, open face
and wide eyes lent an expression of constant surprise. “Can you tell us what
happened the night you were arrested?” He held a microphone close to her face.
“Go ahead. Talk to him, Tori,” Grady whispered.
She stood like a brittle statue. . "My cousin and
I were having dinner on the Long Beach waterfront. Rhubarb and Ginger, we went
there a lot. Seamus McGinn and Timothy Noonan must have tailed us. They’re from
Cobh, County Cork." Her words came out in a robotic rush.
“That’s in Ireland.” Grady chuckled for the camera. "For
once Ireland was lucky. Lucky to be rid of them,” He took her ice-cold hand and
stepped around Barker, a reporter familiar with McGinn’s government-agro
kidnappings. Recovered victims had broken collarbones, fractured limbs,
cigarette burns, stab wounds, shattered eye sockets and facial bones,
accomplished with a blunt instrument. Casualties had been alive at the time of
beatings, with foreign objects jammed down throats. Teeth were found in their
stomachs.
“Excuse me.” Another reporter, a tall woman from the
Long Beach Beacon, swarmed down on Tori. "So you saw McGinn and
Noonan?"
"Correct," Tori lifted her chin, her vibrant
eyes filling with the raw memory. “A half-dozen more stormed in. Carried
automatics, ripped through the place. Found the owner, Irene Brennan. Dragged
her out."
"The owner refused to pay them for protection,” Barker
chimed.
Tori nodded, rubbed her forehead. “Same old deal, a
mob upping the ante.”
And then what?" The earnest reporter from the
Beacon leaned forward.
"My cousin Viv ran out the back. I was
arrested."
“Make room, everybody.” Grady headed for his car,
dragging Tori behind him.
Tori shuffled in slow, measured movements as if
shackled.
“One last question, Tori,” Barker called from behind. “You
tried to leave the mob. What did they want you to do?"
Tori turned halfway around. "Act as a lure. I
refused." She shrugged. “I paid for that decision.”
The woman reporter elbowed Parker out of the way. “Tori.
Your lawyer, Daniel McMahon. Didn’t he serve as the mob's lawyer?”
Tori nodded. “Just great for me,” She paused for a few
seconds. “I didn’t anticipate a setup.”
The reporter touched her arm. “You’re a fighter. How
will you bounce back?”
Tori looked up, her face bleached of color. “I’ll try
to accomplish small things. This will help. Little by little, I’ll let go of
fear.”
“We’ve got to go, folks.” Grady reached to shake hands
with several surrounding him.
Barker popped his thick eyebrows up. “Glad things
worked out.”
“Thank you for following the case.” Grady placed a
hand on Tori’s trembling back
and walked her to the passenger side of his Jeep.
She halted mid-motion. “Where to?”
He stared into her questioning eyes. “I’ll drop you at
your apartment. From there, my assistant will come by.” Grady’s cousin Finn had
rented a studio for her at the Marriott Residence Inn and paid the rent with
her ample trust fund. “You’ll be on the top floor. The apartment overlooks the Queen Mary.”
“Sweet.” Tori placed a hand over her heart. “You,
Finn, and Amy. You are so kind.” She squared her shoulders.
“If you have any questions,” he said, “ring my
associate.” He handed her his private investigator’s business card. “Later
you’ll meet Maeve McGuire.” He opened the passenger door of his Jeep and waited.
She stared at the card. “Oh, yes. Maeve. She found my
cell phone at the scene. This made a big difference at the trial.”
“It did. You’d made a 9-1-1 call, silenced your phone,
and jammed it in the slats under a table.”
Her smile, genuine and appreciative, drew him in. She
glided onto the seat, but her boots remained on the curb. His ex-wife wore
similar Saint Laurents at eight hundred a pair.
He watched her clutching hands and said, “Maeve will
get you settled. Take you shopping.”
She angled her face up at him. “No need for shopping.
I’ll order clothing online. T-shirts, capris, and sneakers. That’s all I’ll
need.”
“Really? Sounds like you’re going to a church picnic.”
He was about to close the door. “Where will you be going?”
“Not far.”
“You’ve been in a prison bubble.”
“Closed off for a decade,” she said. “A concealed
bubble grows fetid.”
It happens, and he nodded. “Learn anything in prison?”
It was a canned question, and he didn’t expect much of an answer.
“Accept dark times. Go from there. Find a teddy bear
among the crocodiles.” She sat with a poker-straight back, a determined expression
blossoming. “You represented my cellmate—”
“—Ebony Yves. Worked as a mule for her husband, Now
she’s working as an embalmer for Coley-Reece Funeral Home. Ebony said you told
her to drop your name when she interviewed.” He arched a brow.
“Mick Coley and my parents were friends.” She nodded.
“It’s in the waterfront neighborhood. Used to be good for hiding illegal
profits. The funeral home overcharged the living but paid employees well.”
“Now that you’re out,” he said, “you’ll need wheels. Unless
you plan to drive your food truck around for supplies.”
“I considered a golf cart. It doesn’t hold enough.
Eventually I’ll buy a small truck. Today, I’d love to get a haircut.” She
frowned, and he sensed her uncertainly about being out. Her thick, dark lashes
closed over her eyes. Without those big, troubled eyes to distract him, fatigue
lined her face. Did she want to blend in?
[S-E1]Like
a python what?
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