Thirteen Stitches

Chapter Two: Nine O'clock

The clock above the door of Interrogation Room 3 read 3:10 a.m., and Detective Cole Brannigan was laying out the case like a man setting a table he had set a hundred times before.

"Your prints on the shears," he said, tapping the first photograph. "Your grandfather's blood on your hands. And a sworn statement from the man who grew up in the bed across from yours." He slid another sheet over. "Danny says you two had words last week. Loud ones."

Ezra's wrist was cuffed to a steel ring bolted into the table. Someone had taped gauze to the back of his head, and every time he moved, the room pulsed. He still wore the gray coat, damp and heavy on his shoulders. Nobody had bothered to take it yet.

"We argued about his cough," he said. "I wanted him to see a doctor. It had nothing to do with money."

"Funny you mention money." Brannigan opened a folder. "A developer offered four million dollars for that shop's land two months ago, and the old man said no. Four million, Ezra. For a guy who fixes hems, that's a lot of reasons." He leaned back. "Here's how a jury hears it. Grandpa won't sell, grandson loses his temper, grabs the nearest sharp thing. Happens every day."

"There were three men in masks."

"Who nobody else saw." Brannigan checked his watch. "The hospital says he's critical. If he dies before morning, this stops being attempted murder. You understand me?"

Ezra understood. He kept seeing the stretcher pulling away, Abel's hand hanging over the edge, and Danny turning his face away in the rain. They had grown up at the same table. Ezra had taught him to thread a needle without looking. None of it made sense, and that was worse than the pain in his skull.

Brannigan let the silence stretch, then gathered his folders and left.

At 4 a.m. the door opened again, and the officer outside straightened like someone had pulled a string in his spine.

The woman who walked in was about twenty-nine, in a charcoal suit cut by someone who knew exactly what they were doing. Ezra noticed that before anything else and hated himself a little for it. Her dark hair was pinned low, and her gray eyes took in the room, the cuff and him in a single pass.

"Isolde Varne," she said, sitting across from him. "Deputy District Attorney."

Everyone in Calder Bay knew the name. She was the youngest Deputy DA in the city's history, granddaughter of Chief Justice Ambrose Varne, whose portrait hung in every courthouse lobby. Reporters said she had never offered anyone the same deal twice. Prosecutors like her didn't visit interrogation rooms at four in the morning.

"I'll be brief, Mr. Lockwood. Your arraignment is at nine. Before then, you can plead guilty to aggravated assault and serve eight years."

"And if I don't?"

"Then I charge attempted murder. I oppose bail, I ask for twenty-five years, and I get them." Her voice never rose. "This offer exists until nine o'clock. After that, it doesn't exist at all."

Ezra held her gaze. "I didn't hurt him."

"That isn't one of the options."

"Then I'll take my chances."

She didn't argue. She closed her folder, and as she did, her eyes dropped to his hands on the steel table. He looked down too. One knuckle carried a faint red scrape from the punch he'd thrown in the shop, nothing more. Abel's face had been beaten until it split. The man who did that would have hands like raw meat.

Her gaze rested there a moment too long. Then she stood and left without a word.

An hour later, Ezra had a third visitor.

The man was in his sixties, silver-haired and soft-spoken, in a navy suit so fine that Ezra could have priced every stitch. He set a leather portfolio on the table and smiled like an old family friend.

"Mr. Lockwood, my name is Pembroke. I've been retained by an old friend of your grandfather's, and he'd like to help." He turned a single document toward Ezra. "I can have every charge withdrawn by sunrise. No arraignment, no record. You'd be at your grandfather's bedside by breakfast."

"Who's your client?"

"Someone with a long memory."

Ezra read the page. It was a transfer of property covering everything Abel owned, his tools, his patterns, his stock, "and particularly any garments, finished or unfinished, held by Abel Lockwood or in the keeping of his family."

Particularly any garments.

He saw the shop again, every coat turned inside out, every lining slashed away. The men hadn't wanted cash or jewelry. They had wanted a coat. And Abel, bleeding on the floor, had grabbed his collar and told him never to take his off.

The gray wool suddenly felt very heavy on his shoulders. Ezra kept his face still and his hands flat.

"No."

Pembroke's smile didn't move. "You haven't heard the full offer."

"I don't need to. I'm not signing anything."

The lawyer studied him, then closed the portfolio with a soft click. At the door, he paused.

"Your loyalty is admirable, Mr. Lockwood. But prison is unkind to men without friends."

The door shut.

Ezra's hands had started to shake, so he gave them work. The right cuff of the coat had torn in the fight, and he picked at the loose thread out of habit, the way Abel always said a tailor's hands never stayed still. Then his fingertip touched something that wasn't wool.

He eased it free. It was a narrow strip of white silk, folded twice and stitched flat inside the cuff, hidden where no one would ever find it unless the seam came apart. He unfolded it under the table. The letters were tiny and perfectly even, sewn in dark blue thread, and he would have known that hand anywhere.

Odile Fenn. Tell her the tailor's account is due.

Beneath it was a phone number.

He read it three times, burning it into memory, before the door banged open. Two officers took him for booking. They emptied the coat's pockets, stood him against a wall and pulled the coat from his shoulders. Ezra slid the silk strip into his shirt sleeve just before the wool left him.

One officer stuffed the coat into a plastic bag, scribbled a number on the tag and tossed it into a gray property bin with a dozen others. Whatever had been worth beating an old man nearly to death now sat under a fluorescent light, guarded by no one.

"You get one call," the officer said, pointing at the wall phone.

Ezra dialed from memory. It rang once.

"Yes?" The voice was a woman's, old and very clear.

"My name is Ezra Lockwood. I was told to tell you the tailor's account is due."

There was a pause, so short he almost missed it.

"Don't say another word to anyone, Mr. Lockwood," she said. "And don't let them move that coat."