Mcquaid's Justice

Prologue

An ear can break a human heart

As quickly as a spear;

We wish the ear had not a heart

So dangerously near.

—Emily Dickinson

Thanks. I’ll pass. Zach Hollingsworth waved the senator’s hovering manservant away. The refusal didn’t come easily. The port wine the butler offered was exquisite. Lush. Richly scented, as full-bodied as the women Zach preferred and the news stories that had made his career.

But Zach needed to keep his wits about him. What he wanted, more than anything, was the promised tip. Phillip Gould, California’s senior senator, had lured Zach to his ritzy D.C. town house with the promise of a scoop guaranteed to make his career, to forever lay waste to the lean years of scandal and allegations and he-said/she-said propositions.

What Zach really wanted was for the senator to spit it out. Either the nomination of Byron Reeves to the Supreme Court was in jeopardy, or it was not.

Phillip Gould allowed his goblet to be refilled, then directed the manservant to retrieve a portfolio that lay conspicuously on the antique sideboard. Watching below his hooded brow, the senator waited until the servant disappeared behind enormous swinging oak doors to the serving area.

He set the leather portfolio carefully to his left and gave Zach a speculative look. Have an interest in architecture, Hollingsworth?

None.

"Interesting piece in the Post a couple of days ago. Gould pared the end off a fat Cuban cigar. Thought you might have seen it."

Sorry, I must have missed that one. Zach forced an easy, self-deprecating smile to mask his mounting irritation. A California golden boy in his youth, tanned, trim, blond and blue-eyed, Gould had gone to very expensive seed. Now, even the senator’s sentences, lacking a subject—"I spotted an interesting piece, or I thought you might have seen...—were tending to annoy Zach. What was the story?"

An architectural design award.

A prize. Zach leaned back, slouching a bit in his chair, letting a bit of his impatience surface. Senator, forgive me, but is this going somewhere, or is your question—

An idle one? Gould interrupted, blithely lighting his cigar. He dragged the powerful, sublimely scented smoke into his lungs and exhaled. He fixed his gaze on Zach through a blue haze curling toward the flames of seven candles mounted in an antique porcelain candelabra. His expression hardened. I don’t deal in idle questions.

All right. Just so we understand each other. Who won the award?

A woman.

Was the competition rigged?

Gould tapped ashes into a crystal tray and blinked. Assuredly not, or this young woman would not have won no matter how far superior her work. He shoved the portfolio toward Zach. Tell me if you recognize her.

About as likely to identify some obscure female architect as he was to write about one, Zach cut the senator a look that said as much.

Snaring the cigar from between his teeth with a curled forefinger, Gould dropped his heavy hand on the table. Humor me.

Zach sat forward and dragged the portfolio closer, then flipped the cover open to a black-and-white photo on newsprint, sans story or attribution. He had never seen the woman captured in the shot. He knew that up front. But having cultivated a near photographic memory, he searched his mind for some obscure connection to Judge Reeves and the impending confirmation hearings.

He thought the woman in the photo to be in her midtwenties, a brunette with exceptionally fair skin, not a classic beauty, but a beauty nonetheless. Should I recognize her?

Gould blew more smoke, tapped more ashes, neither confirming nor denying, just... waiting.

Zach frowned at the photo again. Reeves has a daughter who must be about her age.

The senator’s fleshy lips bent themselves to the suggestion of approval. Indeed. Her name is Amy. Interesting twist...she’s deaf as a stone.

Zach skidded the photo back into the open leather portfolio. So Reeves has a deaf daughter who won an architectural award. I’m impressed. Wonder, he cracked, his voice thick with now ill-concealed disdain, mocking the senator with his own annoying habit of speech, what the Judiciary Committee members will find in that to impugn Reeves’s character.

Spare me your sarcasm, Hollingsworth. Gould sucked on his cigar. Smoke curled about his face, soiling his commentary. When a man has suffered a dry spell as long as yours since winning an award of any description, never mind the Pulitzer, perhaps one should begin to reflect upon one’s own lack of imagination.

That’s the problem for a world-class journalist these days, Zach snapped, reflecting instead on the approximate amount of time it might take him to cram the senator’s fancy cigar down past the turkey wattle of double chins down his throat. So little is left to the imagination. But if it makes you happy, I’ll look into it.

There’s the spirit. An open mind is fine asset. I’m persuaded that you’ll be able to set aside your preconceived notions of Byron Reeves’s stellar record. Enough, perhaps, to recall where you were twenty-four years ago?

Zach stared at the senator. "I was at the Trib in Chicago on an internship—working, like everybody else, on the Jessup heiress kidnap story."

When the poor, innocent little heiress showed up on the security tapes in the thick of pulling off a bank heist, Gould prodded.

Byron Reeves prosecuted the case. Your point would be...what, exactly?

Gould blinked. Pamela Jessup was never apprehended, or charged for her crimes—despite which, Gould went on, honing the circle of fire on his cigar, the case propelled Reeves into the national spotlight. Saved him from a life of obscurity as a run-of-the-mill prosecutor and landed him a career on the federal bench.

Zach shrugged. He was starting to believe that the senator might be about to offer him something substantial. He didn’t want to risk losing it, but he wasn’t going to play lapdog either. Reeves won a conviction. They both got what they deserved.

On the contrary. Byron Reeves, Gould snarled, has never gotten what he deserves.

Meaning what?

Gould sat back, sucking smoke into his throat, then issuing smoke rings like an overfed guppy belching bubbles of air. I believe, Hollingsworth, that if you pursue the issue with a modicum of imagination, you will find Byron Reeves at the heart and soul of a felony conspiracy.

To do with Pamela Jessup?

The feds bagged David Eisman and his sidekick. Gould squashed the butt of his cigar till its stubbed sides split open. Ever think to ask yourself how a twit debutante like Pamela Jessup slipped through his fingers?

I don’t recall any great hue and cry going up over it. Pamela Jessup was the kidnap victim, for Chrissake. The feds would have turned her into a witness. Even if they hadn’t offered immunity, her family had enough money to get her off.

Her family, Gould reminded Zach, refused to pay the ransom.

The subtle buzz of excitement started up in Zach’s gut. He badly wanted Gould’s slant to have real substance. Instinct told him to play out the line. They would have come around. The rich do that.

No, Gould denied categorically. Her family knew from long experience what a conniving little liar she was. He snorted. Trust me.

A conniving little liar? Zach thought. What half-buried hatchet was this?

The Jessups, Gould went on, had washed their hands of their daughter.

And you know that because—?

Our families were quite close. Pamela was a wild seed from the word go. David Eisman, on the other hand, was a two-bit hood without the brains or the balls to stick up the local convenience store. Paint him in as the mastermind of a kidnap? I don’t think so.

Are you suggesting Jessup’s abduction was a hoax? An extortion Pamela Jessup intended from the start to perpetrate on her own family?

Let me fill in the picture for you, Gould continued, with an air of forswearing subtleties in the face of Zach’s tedious skepticism, Byron Reeves was also a family friend of the Jessups—even married a poor relation.

You’re kidding.

Not for a moment. Let me finish. It was Byron Reeves on hand for Justice the night the boys down at the local FBI nailed Eisman and his drugged-out sidekick. They both swore up and down that Pamela Jessup was locked in a warehouse closet—no way she could have gotten away without help.

Come on! Reeves?

Gould ignored the protest. Byron Reeves lived and worked in the jurisdiction of the bank heist, one among a hundred or so federal prosecutors. Still it isn’t outside the realm of possibility that he would be tapped to take on the case. But remember—

The guy was married to Pamela Jessup’s shirttail relation. Zach’s pulse hammered in his ears.

And yet Byron Reeves wound up as lead prosecutor in a case from which he should clearly have recused himself. Are you beginning to get the picture?

Zach nodded thoughtfully. Here, assuming Gould’s characterization of Pamela Jessup as a wild-seed conniving little liar meant that he did in fact have some dank and unsavory agenda of his own, was a likely case of the pot calling the kettle black. But Zach’s own Kansas upbringing, and years of picking his way through thickets of lies to get at the truth, left him certain of one thing.

The pot calling the kettle black didn’t mean the kettle wasn’t black.

Liars told the absolute truth when it suited their purposes. Whatever Gould’s ulterior motive, Reeves might well have ignored a serious conflict of interest and committed a felony or two all his own. The story potential would have been explosive if Jessup were still alive and on the lam, but she wasn’t.

Still.

Byron Reeves aiding and abetting the escape of a fugitive, failing even to indict Pamela Jessup for her crimes, was the big time.

Zach had to ask the obvious question. He didn’t bother to cloak the query in watered-down euphemisms. Senator, if you knew Reeves was covering up a conflict of interest, why in hell didn’t you go screaming bloody murder twenty-five years ago?

I did. Gould sat back comfortably, unintimidated. The Jessups were personal friends. But unlike Reeves I put my civic obligation, however painful, ahead of the loyalty I had to her family. I informed the Justice Department.

You’re telling me the Attorney General of the United States blew you off?

Gould sneered. Let’s just say Reeves has friends in high places.

Which, Zach thought, only made it all the more heinous. A man who aspired to sit on the bench of the highest court in the land in judgment of his fellow citizens sure as hell should never have thumbed his nose at the law, even if the extent of his complicity was in poor judgment.

About Reeves’s daughter...

Amy? Heaving himself from his chair, clearly signaling the end of the interview, Gould smiled. More than meets the eye there.

Chapter One

‘Wishing a thing,’ my grandfather used to say, ‘don’t make a thing so.’ But there was one thing he taught us a man could depend on—besides, Cy McQuaid joked to the friends and neighbors gathered to mourn his namesake’s loss, the love of a good woman.

Bittersweet smiles, a few heartfelt chuckles came. I believe it too, Cy went on. He believed that working the land, carving out a living from a couple thousand acres of godforsaken earth, a man could trust that everything is exactly what it seems. Nothing more, nothing less, nothing hidden, nothing secret. Little else in life happens that way.

Done with what he had to say, Cy stepped back on the craggy, windswept hill next to his youngest brother, Matt, and let the Reverend Bleigh take over.

He heard the ritual words, the return of His faithful servant Cyrus McQuaid, dust unto dust, unto his Lord and Creator. But in his mind’s eye, Cy imagined his granddad’s spirit, free at last to appreciate the rugged, good-for-nothing landscape, so barren only the hardiest scrub oak survived.

Cyrus McQuaid had spent the whole of his life cooped up in an accounting office, shaping perfect numbers in rigid columns in search of a buffalo-head nickel’s worth of profit. If he’d ever found it two years running, he’d have bought the Circle Q himself. Instead, he spent his twilight years railing at his son, Jake, Cy’s father, for sinking his money into the place.

Even so, Gramps had known in his heart of hearts ranching wasn’t about profit, it was about a way of life. You had to love the land for its own sake. You had to take your pleasures where you found them, as damn few and far between as they came. You had to believe your seed would sprout and produce enough grain to keep your livestock alive—or money enough in the bank to make up the difference.

And when the calving started in the middle of the night and an ice storm hit with the first steaming calf to drop, you put everything else aside. Which was exactly what happened the night Cyrus’s daughter-in-law, Cy and Cameron’s mother, died.

Jake McQuaid, Cyrus’s son, hadn’t made it back from calving till her body had gone stone-cold.

After that, Jake boarded up the house, sold off the ranch in East Texas, and went back to sheriffing in the next county over. Then he’d gone through another wife he didn’t have the heart to love, and had another son, Cy’s youngest brother Matt.

Jake kept a few horses and taught his boys to ride. They learned to lasso, practicing at first with an old sawhorse. They tore up their hands learning to repair barbed-wire fences, which was just the beginning of how tough they grew up to be.

Jake had spared them none of the harsh realities. Cy could still remember the day, the hour, the way the air was choked with dust baked dry in the heat of the Texas sun, when Jake was obliged to fetch the rifle he carried in a gun rack mounted against the back window of his ’76 pickup and put a snake-bitten dog named Millie out of her misery.

The mangy sheepdog who had saved all their skins more than once, had put herself between Matt and the rattler he tripped over.

Even a number-crunching old fart like his grandfather knew all this. A man did what a man had to do, at the business end of a pencil, astride his horse, on his ranch, or behind the badge he wore.

Especially behind the badge.

A man did what was right and honorable and just, and mercy didn’t have hell of a lot to do with it.

Cy stood in the biting wind beneath the cloudless blue Colorado sky, hat in hand for a few moments after the rest, his father, Susan and his brothers had all turned away. His right hip and leg ached like all billy-hell. Always would. A small fortune in titanium had reconstructed bone enough for him to function, even to ride. But he wasn’t willing to swallow ibuprofen to the tune of a couple thousand milligrams every four hours for the rest of his life, so he had learned to live with the pain.

He lingered because he wasn’t ready to face Susan, but when he turned, certain that she would have gotten into the old tank of a Buick with his father, she stood waiting for him. Her hands were shoved deep in the pockets of her black coat, her graying blond hair framing her face under a black lace mantilla. He had no idea how the thing stayed put on her head.

I asked Cameron and Matt to ride back with your dad. The crow’s-feet about her hazel-green eyes deepened with her bittersweet smile. Even as grown men, the McQuaid boys had mostly done what Susan asked them to do, even when it was pretty much the last goddamned thing they wanted to do. She linked an arm through his and they began walking back to his car. Thanks for coming, Cy. It means a lot to your father.

I’d have come regardless, Susan. You know that.

Still and all.

How did you get Matty here? he asked, falling easily into Susan’s diminutive for his youngest brother, the only one of the three of them who’d left Colorado in his rearview mirror, with no intention of ever returning. Matt was a Texas Ranger now.

Why did you come? she countered.

He’s my grandfather, Susan. It’s family. Matt cut himself loose a long time ago.

Matty feels the same, Cy, she chided. I think he feels it more because he’s cut himself off. She shivered. Texas can be a very lonely place.

He helped Susan into his pickup. They drove back to the ranch house in a silence more uneasy than he was accustomed to feeling with Susan. She had something to say to him, doubtless to do with his father, but she had tried too many times to make a case that wouldn’t be made in his father’s behalf. Not where Cy was concerned, or either of his brothers, for that matter.

He pulled up in front of the wide veranda and shoved the stick into neutral, leaving the engine on for some heat inside the cab. He sat a few moments waiting for her to get up her nerve to say what she had to say.

She straightened, huddling inside her coat. Your father’s birthday is coming up in a couple of months. His seventieth. I’m planning a spring barbecue and I want you to be here. I want you to come for a celebration.

He knew about Susan and birthdays. I’ll try to make it.

I know you will. You’re the oldest, Cy. I’m hoping if you come, Cam and Matty will see their way clear, too.

Cy felt his jaw stiffen. His leg was giving him fits. All she had to do was say, Do it for me, Cy, and he would come. She knew that. Cameron too, though Matt was another story. But it would be meaningless then, because she would know he had come for her sake, and what she wanted was for him to come to honor his father.

What she wanted was for all Jake’s sons to forgive him, and that was as unlikely as hoarfrost in July. In the words of all too many hackneyed country-and-western songs, Jake had done Susan wrong. He had lived with Susan Powell, taking her to his bed, letting her raise his sons and cook his meals and keep his house and wash his shorts, all without marrying her. And he’d been doing it since the night that Cy and his brothers had carried Susan limp and unconscious, bedraggled and near-dead, home to their father.

But Susan had never given up trying to reconcile the boys, now long since men, to what they considered their father’s utter lack of honor where she was concerned. Do as I say, not as I do, was the long and short of it where Jake was concerned.

Cy didn’t want to fight with her. I’ll talk to Cameron, but that’s all I can promise.

Now? she pressed him. Today, while you’re all here?

He nodded.

She flashed him a smile, and reached to pat his cheek. You’re a good man, Cy. A good, decent, wonderful man.

He wondered if she would think so when he asked her about the woman in the photo on his dash. He debated doing it now while he had her to himself, but his father, lean, lanky and stooping in the shoulders a little bit, was pacing the veranda waiting for her to come in. Cy wanted to talk to Cam about it first anyway.

He got out and went around to help Susan out. Jake bowlegged his way down the stairs and took her back up again and inside. Cy followed and started looking for Cameron among all the locals, ranchers and their wives and kids milling around with paper plates piled up with food. He got waylaid by the preacher and his daughter.

Good to see you, Cy, the Reverend Bleigh said, offering his hand to shake.

You too, Reverend.

Sorry about the circumstances.

Yeah.

You remember my daughter Marcee?

You remember, Cy. She laughed. Plain as a mud fence