Thirteen Stitches

Chapter Four: To The Letter

For a long moment, nobody in the room moved.

Isolde stared at the panel as if it might rearrange itself into something else. Then she bent, picked up her file and set it on the table with great care.

"That's my grandfather's signature." She didn't touch the silk. "He raised me to believe a Varne bows to no one, and I've built my whole career proving it. Every case, every conviction." Her eyes went to Odile. "And you're telling me he owed a tailor?"

"He owed this tailor's family," Odile said. "And as of six months ago, Ms. Varne, so do you."

Isolde closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them, the prosecutor was back.

"Then say it," she told Ezra. "Let's see what my family's name is worth to you."

Ezra had thought about it in the minutes before she arrived. He could ask her to make everything vanish with one phone call. But charges that vanished could come back, and a man freed by a secret favor would always have something to hide.

"Free me lawfully," he said. "And find out who really did this."

Something shifted in her expression, too quickly to name.

Odile placed a pair of silver scissors in his palm. They were Abel's, worn smooth at the finger loops, and Ezra had watched his grandfather use them ten thousand times. He slipped one blade under the gold cross-stitch on the Varne panel and closed his hand. The thread parted with a sound so small it shouldn't have mattered, and the corner of the silk lifted free.

"The debt is called," Odile said. "And witnessed."

Isolde looked at the clock. It read 8:09.

"Lawfully," she repeated. "To the letter." She picked up the wall phone and dialed without looking. "This is Varne. I want the dispatch log for last night's call from Mercy Street, every timestamp, on my phone in ten minutes. Then pull the traffic cameras on Mercy and Coldwater from eleven-thirty to midnight." She hung up and dialed again. "Forensics. Send me the raw print sheet from the Lockwood scene. Not the summary, the raw sheet."

Ezra watched her work and understood why defense lawyers spoke her name the way sailors talked about storms. She never hurried and never repeated herself. She read the file once, front to back, while the answers came back one call at a time, and at a certain page her mouth went tight.

At 9:00 a.m., Courtroom Six was half full. Ezra stood beside Odile in yesterday's clothes, his head throbbing beneath the gauze. Brannigan sat in the second row of the gallery with his arms folded, a man waiting to collect.

Isolde rose before the judge finished reading the charge.

"Your Honor, the People move to withdraw all charges against Mr. Lockwood pending further investigation."

The judge lowered his glasses. "On what grounds?"

"Three." Her voice carried to the back wall. "The emergency call reporting the assault came in at 11:52 p.m. A traffic camera shows Mr. Lockwood reaching Mercy Street at 11:55. Someone reported this crime three minutes before the defendant arrived to commit it. Second, the victim suffered a savage beating, and Mr. Lockwood's hands carry no injuries consistent with it. Third, the forensic sheet lists three sets of prints on the shop's rear door, and Detective Brannigan's report lists only two."

The gallery stirred. Ezra turned enough to see Brannigan's face go from red to a deep, mottled purple.

"Granted," the judge said. "Mr. Lockwood, you're free to go."

The courthouse steps were crowded with cameras. An assault in Harrowgate would normally rate a paragraph on page nine, but a grandson beating the old tailor who dressed half the city was a story, and someone was giving it to them.

Danny stood near the top of the steps, his eyes red and his voice breaking in all the right places.

"I keep asking myself how I missed it," he was saying. "He was my brother. I never thought he could be a monster."

Ezra stopped two steps below him.

Danny wore a navy jacket Ezra had never seen before. It fit him better than anything he'd ever owned, and Ezra's eye went straight to the left shoulder, where the seam had been let out a quarter inch and eased into the sleeve with a soft rolled finish. Only one tailor in Calder Bay cut a shoulder like that. Ferrante sewed for a single family and no one else, and that family was the Draycotts.

The cameras swung toward Ezra. Danny saw him and froze mid-sentence.

Ezra stepped up beside him, close enough that only Danny could hear.

"Ferrante always lets out the left side," he murmured. "Ask him who's paying."

The color drained from Danny's face until it looked gray in the morning light. His mouth opened, but nothing came out.

Ezra kept walking because he didn't trust himself to stop. The last thin hope that Danny had simply been confused or frightened broke quietly inside him. Danny hadn't made a mistake. He had sold them out, and someone had dressed him for it.

Isolde caught up with him at the bottom of the steps.

"You asked me to free you lawfully and find out who did this," she said. "You're free, and as of nine o'clock this is an open investigation with my name on it. That's the letter of the favor. House Varne owes you nothing more."

"Understood."

She didn't leave. Her eyes went past him to the crowd on the steps, and something troubled moved behind them.

"One thing bothers me," she said. "My uncle Rupert called at one this morning and assigned me this case personally. He's never done that before." Her jaw tightened. "Nobody assigns me anything."

Before Ezra could answer, the phone the clerk had returned to him buzzed in his pocket. It was the hospital.

"Mr. Lockwood? This is the ICU. You should come now."

He ran.

The ICU was on the sixth floor, and Ezra took the stairs because the elevator was too slow. He came through the double doors breathing hard just as a man in pale blue scrubs stepped out of Abel's room and turned the other way.

Ezra's eye caught him in a heartbeat. The scrubs still showed sharp factory creases down the chest and trouser legs, as if they had come out of a package an hour ago. The shoes beneath them were black oxfords, hand-lasted, the kind that cost more than a nurse earned in a month.

The man didn't hurry. He walked down the corridor and through the far doors without looking back.

Behind Ezra, inside Abel's room, the monitor let out one long, flat tone.