Shattered Read online

  “All right, but remember, happy hour is over at seven, so don’t be long.”

  Danielle turned to the mirror and pretended to put on more mascara. She didn’t wear a lot of makeup, but too many sleepless nights required it. She pulled out a tube of concealer and hid the dark circles. Added a little color. Better.

  She still felt like a ghost beneath the gloss and glitter.

  The bar—called the Gavel because of the proximity to the courthouse—where the legal secretaries hung out every Wednesday night was two blocks from their law office in Glendale. It was a large firm, and anywhere from four to ten women met once a week to let off steam and enjoy company and gossip.

  It was the gossip Danielle hated, almost as much as the small talk.

  Tonight six of them sat at one of the booths and drank wine. Danielle had to regulate herself. Alone, she would drink an entire bottle. With people, one glass was all she could handle.

  Nina put her hand over Danielle’s. “I’m so glad you decided to join us tonight, especially after the victory you helped secure.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Danielle said. “Just my job.”

  “You caught two huge mistakes that saved our client tens of thousands of dollars, and a major embarrassment for our firm. Your drink’s on me tonight.”

  Danielle didn’t want the accolades. Yes, she was good at her job. It was all she had. Work or die slowly. Those were her options.

  The women all chatted amongst one another. Danielle responded to questions because it was expected. She asked a few of her own—she could play the small talk game when she had to. Half the women at the table were married. Grace had no kids, Natalie had a teenage daughter, and Nina had a son.

  An eight-year-old boy named Kevin.

  Danielle didn’t want to ask, but she couldn’t help herself. As the conversation turned to relationships and children, she said, “Is your husband home with Kevin? Does he watch him every Wednesday?”

  It was a casual question and fit the conversation, but it was something that had been on Danielle’s mind a lot lately. Especially after she saw Tony Fieldstone watching his law partner, Lana Devereaux, at the Christmas party six weeks ago. The way he looked at her. The way he watched her walk. Danielle knew the look.

  She knew it well.

  Too well.

  Nina rolled her eyes. “Sometimes he does—he loves spending time with Kevin, don’t get me wrong, but Tony is all work, work, work. And tonight he had a poker game with Judge Carlson and the gang. Third Wednesday of the month. I say, why not Fridays when you don’t have to be in court the next morning? But men.”

  Men. Right.

  Danielle had worked for Taggert, Fieldstone, Finch, and Devereaux for three years. She knew of the poker game, it was common knowledge just like Wine Wednesdays and the monthly bunco game Grace hosted that she had, thankfully, avoided almost every month. But she wondered how long the game really went. If maybe Tony Fieldstone had someplace else he wanted to be.

  A place he wasn’t supposed to be.

  With a woman he wasn’t supposed to be with.

  “You okay, Danielle?” Nina asked.

  “Sorry, long day. Little headache.”

  “Another glass of wine? You can Uber home and I’ll pick you up in the morning. You don’t live too far from me.”

  “No, I’m fine.” She smiled, such a fake smile, but no one knew. “Do you have a regular babysitter for Kevin? He’s such a good kid.” Nina had brought him into the office a couple of times when there were minimum days in school and she didn’t have a sitter. Danielle tried not to pay attention to him, but she couldn’t help it. He was a perfect child.

  Perfect.

  Tony didn’t deserve a perfect son like Kevin when he was off screwing another woman.

  You don’t know that he is having an affair. You only suspect.

  She knew. She damn well knew and she would prove it.

  She always did.

  “Tony’s mom watches him after school—she lives only a couple blocks from his school, walks over and gets him every day. It’s nice, Kevin being able to spend some time with his grandmother.”

  “It is,” Danielle agreed.

  But you should be picking him up at school. You should be spending that time with him. Instead you’re sitting here laughing and drinking wine with a bunch of selfish, arrogant women.

  “We have a regular babysitter when we have to work late—Maggie Crutcher.”

  There was a lawyer named Wayne Crutcher. Maggie was his daughter. A teenager. Probably brought her boyfriend over to fuck when Kevin went to bed. They all did. They couldn’t be trusted.

  The talk turned back to the office, and Danielle was relieved. She still needed to get out of here. Forty-five minutes … that was long enough, wasn’t it? She showed her face, made the small talk, did the dance, she needed to go because she was already on edge.

  “You know, I’m really tired after today,” Danielle said. She finished her wine and smiled. “I think I’m going to call it a night.”

  “Do you want to join us Friday for bunco? It’s at Shelly’s house in Burbank,” Grace said. “You had so much fun last time you came.”

  Danielle barely remembered the last time—it had to be six months ago. She had too much wine, of that she was certain.

  “I don’t know, my mom is having a hard time getting around and I help her on the weekends. Shopping, fixing things around the house, you know.”

  “You’re so good to your mom,” Nina said. Danielle had told her all about her mother years ago, mostly to get out of socializing. “To drive all the way up there.”

  “Where does she live?” Natalie asked.

  “Sacramento,” Danielle lied. But it was a lie she told often, so it was one that came out smoothly. “It’s only five, six hours depending on traffic. I don’t mind, put on a book-on-tape or listen to music. But if she doesn’t need me, I’ll consider bunco. You know me, I’m not really an extrovert. Too many people makes me antsy.” That was the truth.

  Nina smiled and patted her hand. “No pressure, but I would love you to come. It’s one night a month, a great way to get out and just relax, no work the next day.”

  “Thanks.” She got up, said good-byes—why did it take so long to just tell people good-bye? Why more questions, more small talk, more nothingness?

  Finally, she was free. She walked back to the parking garage and retrieved her car. She intended to drive home where she could open a bottle of wine and maybe eat something, but she found herself outside Judge Carlson’s house.

  The judge had a private address, but she’d followed Tony Fieldstone here last month, after she suspected he was screwing Lana Devereaux. She saw Tony’s car in the driveway of the opulent house in the Glendale hills.

  And Lana’s car. Did Nina know that Lana played poker with “the boys”? The only female partner … is that how it started? The one night a month … turning into something more?

  For two hours Danielle watched the house from down the street. Then a car left.

  Lana.

  Five minutes later a second car left.

  Tony.

  She followed him.

  Tony didn’t go home. She knew where he lived, because she’d once gone to bunco at Nina’s house when she first started the job with the law firm. Instead, Tony went to Lana Devereaux’s condo in Los Feliz.

  Heart racing, she drove past his car as he got out. He didn’t pay any attention to her. Or her common black Honda Accord. It didn’t stand out. Just like she didn’t stand out.

  Danielle went straight home. When she pulled into her garage she turned off the ignition and sat there. Her knuckles were white. Slowly, she peeled her hands off the steering wheel. They were sore from gripping so hard.

  She went inside and poured a glass of wine. Drank it quickly, then poured another, and picked up her phone.

  “Hello,” the familiar voice said. A voice that belonged to a man she had once loved with all her heart and so
ul … and now hated.

  “Have you cheated on your wife yet? Because you know you will. You’re all the same. All of you. Disgusting.”

  “Danielle.”

  “Why did you do it? Why?”

  She asked the same question every time she called him. He never had a good answer. Because there wasn’t a good answer.

  “I was a fool.”

  “I hate you.”

  “I know. Is that why you called? To tell me how much you hate me?”

  “No.” She closed her eyes. “I loved you so much. I loved you so much it hurts. And—” Her voice cracked. The pain was real. Still so very real. Time doesn’t heal all wounds. Whoever said that hadn’t lost their entire world.

  “I’m sorry, Danielle. I truly am sorry.”

  “It should have been you. I wish you had died instead.”

  “So do I, Danielle. But you can’t—”

  She ended the call, unable to listen to her ex-husband anymore. She threw her half-filled wineglass across the room and screamed as it shattered against the wall. She watched the red liquid run down the plaster for several minutes, her mind blank.

  Then she walked back to the kitchen, retrieved another wineglass, and poured more wine. She sat at the table and stared straight ahead as she drank.

  Thinking.

  Planning.

  Hating.

  It was so much easier to hate than it was to forgive.

  Chapter Eight

  THURSDAY

  David left Santa Barbara at dawn for the three-hour drive to Corcoran State Prison. Rising early wasn’t a problem for him—he was up before 6:00 A.M. every morning. But he felt that this entire endeavor was an exercise in futility. While Max’s analysis was intriguing, when a man is convicted of killing his son, he is most likely guilty. Prisons are full of killers and most are there because they did the crime.

  Adam Donovan had been convicted of murder without taking the stand in his own defense. There was no hard evidence against him—even the circumstantial evidence seemed thin when David read the trial transcript. The prosecution had gone for the lighter sentence—they claimed that Donovan had accidentally killed his son and in a panic buried his body only a few miles from their house. According to a conversation Max had had with the public defender who had represented Donovan, she’d urged him to take a plea deal of involuntary manslaughter and five years in prison. He refused.

  Either the guy was truly innocent, or he thought he could beat the rap because the evidence was so shaky. His alibi was his mistress—the same alibi that Andrew Stanton used—but unlike the Stanton case, the police didn’t find Donovan’s mistress reliable. They completely discredited her on the stand, and while she didn’t waver from her claim that they’d been together the night that Chris Donovan had been killed, in the end, the jury hadn’t believed her.

  It didn’t help Donovan’s case that he initially lied to police about where he was when his son was kidnapped. Only when the police seriously looked at him did he give up his mistress. It also didn’t help that Donovan had a prior record—he’d been arrested for assault when he was nineteen, given time served and community service, but the ding was on his record.

  David didn’t think that information should have been given to the jury twelve years after the fact, because Donovan had kept his nose clean since. David had a couple of dings on his own record before he had enlisted in the army. He’d been an angry teenager, and was still angry much of the time—but he’d learned to temper his darker nature through exercise, working long hours, and his daughter. He didn’t want to give his ex-girlfriend any reason to prevent him from seeing Emma.

  What seemed particularly odd to David was that the defense hadn’t even asked the judge to disallow the assault. After more than a decade? Before he was even married? It seemed like negligence or incompetence.

  David didn’t have a lot of respect for the legal system. He’d had his own issues when he had to fight for the right to see his daughter. He paid child support, he wanted to be in her life, but because he’d never been married to her mother, he’d had an uphill battle and Brittney constantly held his visitation over his head like a fucking carrot.

  Do what I say or you’ll never see Emma.

  So he jumped through the hoops because there was nothing more important to him than his daughter.

  Which is why he was having a difficult time with this investigation Max had launched. Adam Donovan had been convicted in a court of law of murdering his son. Even though the evidence was circumstantial, he had been convicted, he hadn’t filed an appeal, and statistics showed that he was most likely guilty. David wanted to punch him more than talk to him.

  Not only that, but Max was far better at getting people to talk to her. Often because she irritated them so much, they couldn’t shut up. David wasn’t a reporter. He wasn’t a cop. His claim to fame had been ten years in the U.S. Army, eight of them as a Ranger. He had no college degree, and his only training outside of the military was when he went into private security.

  “You’re a dad,” Max had said. “You’ll know what to say, and you’ll know if he’s guilty.”

  He disagreed, but she didn’t budge. Max didn’t falter when she believed that she was right. Ever. It was enough to drive anyone crazy—especially since she was rarely wrong.

  Maybe after his failed attempt to meet with the Porters yesterday, she would understand he wasn’t good at this. They wouldn’t talk to him and threatened to call the cops when he showed up at their house.

  Try again, Max said. Maybe they’ll have a change of heart after sleeping on it, she said.

  Right.

  And that’s what Max didn’t understand. If David was in the same situation as Doug Porter, he would have done exactly the same thing. Well, not exactly. He wouldn’t have threatened to call the cops. He would have slugged the asshole wanting to talk about his dead kid.

  But if anything happened to Emma like what happened to these little boys, David wouldn’t rest until the killer was dead. These dads, while they grieved, would never take the law into their own hands, which meant David didn’t completely understand them. He wasn’t like them just because he happened to be a father. Why didn’t Max see that?

  Because Maxine Revere sees the world through her own glasses, and damn anyone who doesn’t get with the program.

  So now David was here, at Corcoran State Prison, to interview a man convicted of murdering his son. It took more than thirty minutes before he was cleared through security and taken to the visiting area—a large room with several guards at the doors and along the perimeter watching the group of prisoners and visitors. Tables were set up on one side, a television area on another; toys and puzzles were in another corner. David watched as a burly, tattooed convict played dinosaurs with his daughter who couldn’t be more than four. A woman, who David presumed to be the child’s mother, sat to the side, tears in her eyes, watching them.

  “Wait here,” the guard told David and led him to a table in the far corner.

  It took several minutes before another guard brought in Adam Donovan. Donovan sat in the chair across from David and stared without comment.

  The man had hardened, lost weight, gained muscle, and his dark hair had turned half gray in the span of five years since his conviction for the murder of his son. He was only thirty-six, but he looked closer to fifty. A long, jagged scar on his neck hadn’t been there in the last photo David had of him on the day he’d been sentenced.

  “Mr. Donovan, I’m David Kane. I work for Maxine Revere, an investigative reporter with NET television.”

  David had told Max he wouldn’t do well with a man who was convicted of killing his son. All David could think about was his own daughter. If anyone hurt her, he would see red. Anyone who did violence to a child deserved worse than prison.

  Yet here David was, facing a convicted killer, because Max insisted.

  “You don’t like me, so why are you here?” Adam said.

  Perceptive.
>
  “Because my partner is investigating a crime similar to your son’s murder. Dead boy. Only child. One or both parents a lawyer. Kidnapped from his bedroom and found less than two miles from his house.”

  Adam didn’t look surprised, just sad.

  David continued. “There are enough similarities to your son’s murder that we wanted to talk to you.”

  “Well, fuck you. I didn’t kill that kid. I’ve been locked up for five years, three months, and ten days.”

  “I wanted to talk about Chris.”

  “The only reason I agreed to meet with you is to tell you to go to hell. I do not want my family to go through this shit again. My ex-wife … or my mom.” His voice cracked. “My brother and sister, they don’t deserve to be hounded by the fucking press like they were five years ago. No one does. So just—fuck off. Leave us alone.”

  “You pled not guilty.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “You didn’t take the stand. Maxine’s attorney thinks your attorney was an incompetent idiot, but you haven’t filed an appeal. You would probably be granted a new trial for a half-dozen different reasons.”

  “You just don’t get it. My son is dead.” Adam glared at him. “Someone took him from his bed, where he should have been safe, suffocated him, and buried him at the park down the street. Why? Hell if I know. Yet, my ex-wife thinks I killed him. She believes it deep down that I am not only capable of killing a child, of killing my own son, but that I actually did it. My life means nothing. I don’t care. Just—go away.”

  “I have a daughter. I would be moving heaven and earth to find out who hurt her.”

  “How? I have no money—used it all for the trial. I have no family. No one who believes me except my mother, yet she cries every time she visits. I told her to stop coming because it’s going to kill her. And my son is still dead. Finding the killer isn’t going to bring him back.”

  “Let me ask these questions my boss prepared and I’ll let you get back to wallowing in self-pity.”

  “Charmer, aren’t you.”

  David opened his mouth, then closed it when he realized that he had sounded exactly like Max.