While Justice Sleeps(7)
Heat snapped through Avery’s veins, seared her cheeks. She wanted to disconnect the call, but the shaky laughter signaled that her mother was nearing a crash and worse. Years of training had her tamping down the riot of emotion she swore each time would not return. For an instant, she wondered how different life would be if her father were alive. With his deep brown eyes that crinkled at the corners and his hickory skin stretched tight over a square jawline. His ready patience and easy smile—she’d inherited neither of those traits. Who would Rita have been if he’d survived?
Cutting off the useless musing, she swung her legs over the side of the bed. Dad was dead. Rita was high. And she lived stubbornly in reality. In the dark, she felt around for her tennis shoes and a baseball cap. Luckily, she’d chosen to sleep in running shorts and a tank, a vain attempt to stave off the coming DC summer heat. “Rita—Momma, tell me where you are.”
“No. Stuck-up little bitch…” Just as quickly as the venom poured, sugar followed. “Baby, I didn’t mean that. I love you. My one and only…I’m so proud of you. My brilliant lawyer baby. She works at the Supreme Court,” she told the dealer.
“Momma.” Avery bit off the word, her eyes desert dry. She’d grown accustomed to the balancing act, keeping her mother’s demons partitioned away from the world she lived in by day. Bail and rehab versus drafting memos and hunting for precedents. Fighting for patience, she swigged from a bottle of water that sat on her nightstand. The taste of sleep swished for seconds, then disappeared.
“Momma, you there?”
“Where else can I go?” A tiny sob hitched on the line. “Don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“You can go back to the rehab, Momma. I’ll ask them to let you come back.” Again. She’d spent her last chunk of savings on the in-patient facility in February. Rita had lasted twelve weeks, a personal best. But the fee had cleaned out her accounts and maxed out her cards. She’d gotten the meager balances down, as was her habit, but until she hit pay dirt with a job at a fancy law firm, she’d be living very frugally—especially if Rita wanted to return to rehab. And Avery’s boss forbade interviews until the close of the session, so she had only the illusion of employment to tide her over. “Do you want to try again?”
“At that shithole? No way in hell.” More brittle laughter. “I don’t need to get clean, and I don’t want your fucking charity.”
Which defied the call for money, but Avery knew better than to attempt reason. At this stage, placating worked best. Slipping her feet into the shoes she carried, she squatted to tie the laces tight. No telling if tonight’s excursion would include a flight from danger. Always best to be prepared. “Tell me where you are, Momma.”
“So you can come and preach to me? No way.”
“You have to.” Rising, Avery’s hand slipped into the drawer of her nightstand and pulled out a small knife. It was illegal to carry a switchblade in DC, but old habits had died hard. She didn’t like guns, but she couldn’t afford to go to her mom’s preferred haunts without it. One of the few precious inheritances from her dad that her mom hadn’t pawned along the way. Mother-of-pearl handle and their initials engraved on the hilt. Her father’s cosmic joke—Avery Olivia and Arthur Oliver—AOK.
The palm-sized knife wouldn’t stop a drug fiend, but it might slow one down if she ever had to use it. The weapon went into the pocket of her shorts. “If you don’t tell me where you are, I can’t bring you any money.”
“Really?” Hungry to believe, Rita hissed into the phone, “Gotta come soon, though. Real soon.”
Avery headed for the living room, grabbed her keys, and yanked open the front door. Keys. Cell phone. Wallet! She’d forgotten it. Twisting, she kicked at the closing door and rushed back inside. She juggled the cell, hoping Rita wouldn’t hang up before she could get better directions. The signal would die as soon as she entered the stairwell. “I need an address, Rita. Now.”
“You’ll really come?” The wheedling tone begged for a lie. A promise. “You’ll come for real? Bring me some cash?”
Avery stared at the threadbare wallet on the table and contemplated bringing her last fifty to the addict who’d grudgingly given birth to her twenty-six years ago. Screw that. She slipped a ten into her pocket and tossed the wallet onto the table. “Sure, Momma. Just tell me where I’m going.”
TWO
The hollow sound of the ebony cane striking ceramic tiles echoed along the deserted hallway. Dr. Indira Srinivasan enjoyed the eerie thuds, the reverberations signaling her presence in this isolated wing of Advar Biogenetics, Ltd. This was her dominion. Midday here in Bangalore, a city teeming with high-tech industry, her technicians, analysts, and staff filled the building, but no other soul would be in these corridors, save the security guards whose gratitude for their positions was owed to her. The tortuous path to her offices intentionally discouraged all visitors except the most urgent.
She limped along the wide, vacant length of the hallway, heading for her ground-floor suite. Western tradition dictated a corner office in the penthouse of a towering modern facility in one of the city’s ubiquitous biotech parks. It galled that with her advanced rheumatoid arthritis, she could not risk such a journey should the sleek elevators fail. In concession, she inhabited a spacious, sun-drenched suite walled off from the metropolis of Bangalore by thick layers of tempered glass and steel. She could see out, but no prying eyes peered inside.