A Time To Come Home

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She’d almost reached the door when she turned around. “If you ever want to talk about anything—Terry Pratchett books, school, anything—just come find me. I’ll be around.”

Then she left.

Molly frowned, wondering what had possessed her to admit she’d skated out of her last class. How could she be sure Diana wouldn’t rat her out?

Diana had seemed okay. She wasn’t too old and she hadn’t lectured Molly about doing the right thing. But Diana was one of them. An adult.

Molly snorted, disgusted with herself for revealing anything at all to Diana. She put her headphones back on and opened her book, wondering how long it would be until she caught hell for skipping school.

THE APPLE-CHEEKED KID on the stand looked about fifteen years old, although Tyler’s court documents stated his age as nineteen.

Unlucky for the kid.

The juries in adult cases usually came down harder on offenders than juvenile court judges, a bad thing for Grant Livingstone. Because Tyler was about to prove without a reasonable doubt that the teenager had committed arson.

Nobody had died, but the owner of the single-family home that had burned to the ground suffered second-degree burns trying to contain the flames before the fire department arrived.

“I’d like to make sure I have some of the facts straight,” Tyler said, sidling up to the young man. Up close, dressed in a too-big navy blue suit, Grant looked like a boy playing dress-up in his father’s clothes. “Is that okay, Mr. Livingstone?”

“Uh, sure.” The kid clearly wasn’t used to being addressed formally.

“You say the empty gas can police found in your parents’ garage is one you used to fill up the tank of the lawn mower. Is that correct?”

“Yeah,” Grant said, then seemed to remember where he was. “I mean, yes, sir.”

“You also maintain that you were seen in the vicinity of the fire shortly before it started because the house that burned down was along your running route. True?”

“Yes, sir.” The teen straightened and spoke louder, more confidently. “I pass right by that house, I mean where that house used to be, when I go out for a run.”

“How long have you been running that route?”

“Not long. I change my route all the time.”

“I see,” Tyler said.

And he did. Circumstantial evidence had been enough to bring Grant to trial, but not enough to convict him. Without a motive, the odds of the teenager walking free were sky high.

Grant knew that. That’s why he’d refused to plea bargain and why his wealthy father had shelled out big bucks to hire a defense attorney. However, they were unaware of what Tyler knew.

“Mr. Livingstone, do you know a Dr. Millicent Osgood?”

Shock flashed across the kid’s face, which he quickly masked. But Tyler had seen it and knew the case was as good as won.

“Objection,” Grant’s defense attorney called, clearly not recognizing the name. “Irrelevant.”

Tyler glanced back at the young lawyer, a junior associate at a legal firm that counted one of Tyler’s neighbors as a partner.

The attorney had mounted a fairly impressive defense but erred when he let Livingstone take the stand. The law didn’t require defendants to testify, a marked advantage if your client was guilty. A prosecutor who’d done his homework could almost always get a guilty man to incriminate himself. The younger the defendant, Tyler found, the more likely he was to slip up.

All of which meant that the very young lawyer from Ernst, Cooper and Pettinger must actually believe his even younger client wasn’t guilty.

“If the court will bear with me,” Tyler told the judge, a statuesque woman in her sixties. “I’ll show how Dr. Osgood relates to this case.”

“Overruled,” the judge said. “The defendant will answer the question.”

“Dr. Osgood was my twelfth-grade biology teacher at Bentonsville High.”

Tyler waited a moment for that fact to sink in with the jury. “Mr. Livingstone, do you have a high school diploma?”

Grant squirmed in his seat. “No.”

“Why not? You were supposed to graduate with your high school class last year, weren’t you?”

“I, uh, didn’t pass all my subjects.”

“Isn’t it true that the subject you flunked was biology and Dr. Osgood was the teacher who flunked you?”

The pause before Grant answered stretched longer than before. “Yeah.”

“Where do you go to school now, Mr. Livingstone?”

“Rockville Prep.”

“If not for that grade in biology, you’d be in college, correct?”

“Objection, Your Honor,” the defense attorney interrupted, not without a touch of panic. “I fail to see how any of this is relevant.”

Before the judge could rule, Tyler said, “I’d like to submit a phone book into evidence, Your Honor. It goes directly to relevance.”

“Don’t try my patience, counselor,” the judge told Tyler. “Connect the dots in the next minute or you’ll have to move on from this line of questioning.”

“Understood.” Tyler strode to the prosecutor’s table and picked up the community phone book he’d placed there. While walking back to Grant, he flipped it open to a bookmarked page, then handed it to the defendant.

“Mr. Livingstone, would you please read the address listed next to Dr. Millicent Osgood’s phone number?”

The kid reminded him of a caged animal, his eyes frantically searching for a means of escape. After a moment, he cleared his throat and read, “9926 Fairmont Road.”

“Do you know the address of the place that burned down?” Tyler asked.

“No, I don’t,” Grant said, but his eyes and his manner said otherwise.

“Let the record show that address is 9962 Fairmont Road.”

Tyler didn’t relish the gasps and shocked murmurs that reverberated throughout the courtroom. Despite the arrogance that shined through in his manner, Grant seemed more like a misguided kid than a bad one. He’d set the fire in a trash can, probably only intending to frighten. But the wind had been gusty that day, spreading the flames to the branches of a nearby tree that butted up against the house. The resulting inferno had happened very fast.

Tyler spent a good chunk of time trying to get Grant to admit to arson, with no success. But by the time the judge adjourned for lunch, the damage was done. Tyler had furnished the jury with a motive and a defendant who couldn’t meet his eyes when he lied.

The defense attorney would probably spend the lunch break talking to his client about trying to make a deal, but it was too late for that now that Tyler had the case won. Tyler’s boss, the state’s attorney, took pride in his office’s high conviction rate and would never approve a plea bargain at this late stage.

Tyler gathered his papers, placed them in the expensive calfskin leather briefcase his father had bought him last Christmas and headed for the exit.

“Impressive job in there, Tyler.” Jon Pettinger, the neighbor who lived a few doors from him, separated himself from the crowd and shook his hand. Jon kept himself in such good shape that he could have passed for a man a few decades younger if not for his gray hair.

“Thanks, Jon. That’s big of you to say, considering it was your colleague sitting at the defense table. I’m lucky you weren’t there beside him.”

“I’m working another case or I might have been. I was only present today because I happened to be at the courthouse and thought I’d check up on him. I didn’t see much, just the fireworks at the end. You caught my guy unawares, which is a good lesson for him.”

“It’s all about gaining experience and putting in the time. Next time your associate will be better prepared so the prosecution doesn’t surprise him again.”

“You’re right. But next time he won’t be up against an opponent who might become the youngest circuit court judge ever appointed in Maryland.”

“I take it you heard I put in an application for the vacancy.”

“I heard more than that. I heard the judicial nominating commission is very impressed with you. Unless you blow the interview, they’ll recommend the governor appoint you to the bench for sure.”

The thirteen-member commission, armed with background information and statements from local bar associations and interested citizens, would soon meet to interview all the candidates. Tyler had every intention of sailing through the interview, the same way he’d aced his tests in college and law school.

“That’s only the first step,” Tyler said. “The commission can recommend up to seven candidates.”

“I still wouldn’t bet against a guy as accomplished as you, although I’d go nuts if I put in the time you do,” he said with a laugh, then lowered his voice as though they were coconspirators. “Just tell me one thing. Did you get the idea to cross check the addresses because of what happened on Labor Day weekend?”

Tyler cocked his head, trying to remember back to last weekend. He’d spent most of it working, although Lauren Fairchild had stopped by his house in an unsuccessful attempt to persuade him to come to her family’s cookout. “I don’t follow.”

“With that woman who transposed our house numbers. She stopped at my place on Saturday by mistake, but I pointed her in the right direction. Don’t tell me she never found you.”

“I was at the office most of the day Saturday,” Tyler said, then quickly asked, “What did this woman look like?”

“Very attractive. Brown hair a little longer than shoulder length. Big hazel eyes. Oh, and a tiny mole to the left of her mouth, like the one that supermodel has.”

The woman he’d described was Diana Smith.

If his neighbor hadn’t pointed out the mole, Tyler never would have come up with her name.

What could she possibly have come to his house to say after all these years? And why hadn’t she said it when he’d run into her at the community center?

A number of hackneyed expressions ran through his head: water under the bridge. Let bygones by bygones. What’s done is done.

He didn’t listen to any of them. What Diana had to say shouldn’t matter and probably wouldn’t in the long run. But one way or the other, he intended to find out what it was.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE TRIAL KEEPING Tyler away from the community center had entered the second day of its second week. Diana knew this, because the front page of the Laurel County Times had faithfully reported each day’s events. Speculation was that the judge would hand over the case to the jury today.

The last time Diana had read the Times in any detail had been years ago when the prosecuting attorney had been Tyler’s father and the boy on trial the one who’d murdered her brother.

This trial also had a teenage defendant and sensationalist elements, but there the similarities ended. A different Benton was prosecuting this case, the teenager’s weapon had been a gas can instead of a knife and nobody had died.

Diana relegated J.D. to the back of her mind, from where he never left, and put aside the stack of registrations she’d been inputting into a computer spreadsheet. She stood up and stretched her arms overhead.

The hour hand on the wall clock had passed seven, meaning the pickup basketball game on the outside court was well underway. Since Tyler had finished presenting his side of the case, maybe he’d joined the game.

She reached into the pocket of her slacks, fingering the good-luck stone. For the first time in forever, it seemed as though things would work out. She enjoyed her job, and she was doing well in her classes. She’d also moved into the perfect place over the weekend: an affordable two-bedroom garage apartment in a neighborhood filled with children.

She’d yet to make contact with her mother but had tried calling twice, both times getting her answering machine and both times failing to leave a message. Baby steps, she reminded herself, even though she was poised to take a giant one.

All the ingredients had come together for her to tell Tyler about Jaye: tonight. Call her crazy, but she even looked forward to it.

She expected him to be angry at first, but he’d always been reasonable. Once she explained her belief that a baby would have dimmed his bright future, he’d come to understand why she’d lied.

She ventured into the twilight, following the sounds of young men chattering and a basketball bouncing until she reached the lighted court behind the community center. She kept close to the building, bracing herself for the sight of Tyler.