Page 126 of The 1 Lawyer
CHAPTER 100
MASON’S HEAD jerked back as if he’d been struck.
“Huh?”
I repeated, “Is that what you told yourself? To justify it in your own mind?”
He tried to look shocked, like he couldn’t comprehend what I was saying. “What are you talking about, man?”
I wanted to launch out of the chair and punch the injured expression off Mason’s face. “Come on, Mason. My old friend. It’s time to shoot straight with me.”
He lifted his shoulders, shook his head helplessly. “We’re still talking about Joey Roman, right? He’s a killer.”
“The cops didn’t find any kind of souvenir for Iris Caro. Nothing in the hollow book, nothing anywhere in Roman’s house, connects him to that murder.”
“Then they need to keep looking.”
I laughed a little at that. The irony, I guess. “That’s right, they do. Because Roman didn’t kill Iris. And I know I didn’t do it. And Rue didn’t.”
Mason grabbed the arms of his chair and started to rise. I pointed at him. “We’re not done here, Mason.”
He sat back down, perching on the edge of the chair. “You think I’ll sit here and let you fling crazy accusations at me? I won’t stand for that.”
“So why didn’t you ever tell me about Iris?”
“Tell you what?”
“That she came to see you last year about filing for divorce. In all this time, you never mentioned it.”
He glanced at the door and back to me. “I couldn’t tell you. Client confidentiality.”
“But she wasn’t just a client, was she? Jenny’s been thinking that you started carrying a torch for Iris. She says you swore her to secrecy when you asked her to tail Daniel Caro and get compromising pictures of him.”
“Because it would be easy to do! He was a philanderer. He lied under oath when he said Aurora Gates was his only affair. Iris told me the first time she came to my office. She broke down and cried.” He scowled as if the recollection made him angry. “Daniel Caro is a serial womanizer; he’s toxic.”
“I don’t care about Caro’s shortcomings as a husband. But I’m pretty goddamn interested in why you set me up.”
Mason’s knees were shaking. He clutched them to still the movement. “I would never—you can’t think I’d really do something like that.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t think so. Except Jenny’s tech witness found out where those texts and e-mails came from, the ones I supposedly sent to Iris. You did it. You took over my phone, my e-mail. They came from you.”
His face was white as parchment. He didn’t deny it.
I went on. “We knew my neighbor had video on their security system, checked it out back when this all began. We never thought anything of you coming and going from my house. You had a set of keys. You were a frequent visitor. Always welcome, right?”
He didn’t say anything, so I kept talking, determined to force a response. “That made it easy to plant evidence. Because nobody’d think twice about you walking through my front door. Because you were my best friend.”
I was starting to lose it. “The kind of friend who set me up to rot in prison for a crime you committed. You don’t have a shred of decency left—you actually took on Rue’s defense! You were acting as her attorney when she was on trial for a crime you’d committed! What has she ever done to you? I guess Rue’s life was just collateral damage, was that it?”
“No!” Mason said.
“No?” I had to restrain myself; I wanted to fly over the desk, take him down. “You made the anonymous tip about the stupid goddamn love triangle! You set us up!”
His face had turned gray. Saliva sprayed as he cried out, “I set it up so you could beat it!”
CHAPTER 101
HE WIPED the spit off his face with the back of his hand. “It was a shit case! Anonymous tip? One bloody shoe? And the hair! I knew Gordon-James couldn’t resist presenting the hair evidence; he’s been doing that for years. And I knew you’d discredit it. We went to that criminal defense conference together, remember? In Jackson? The federal public defender talked about all those hair cases the FBI had backed away from. Remember?”