Custody of the State (5 page)

“Let's all just stand down,” Banes said with an air of superiority. “Actually, I think Spike may have something.”

“Crystal, these criminal cases take a long time to develop. We don't know which way this case is going to turn,” the producer said.

“I'm not thinking of this as a criminal case—not exactly,” Banes said. “That would not be the real hook. The hook would be…” And with that she paused a minute to think about it.

“The hook,” she continued, “would be to
locate
this mother who's on the run
.
To get to her
before
the cops get to her.
Talk about a scoop!”

“What if she doesn't want to talk?” the writer asked.

“Hey, give me a break. Everybody wants their fifteen minutes—especially on
Inside Source,
” Banes said. “Besides, who says that we need to get her permission to find her? Let's track her down. Get the scoop. Stick a camera in her face before the authorities can even locate her.”

“This is going to be expensive,” the producer chimed in. “We may have to get some extra budget approval.”

“Then do it,” Banes said. “Go. Go. Whatever you have to do. I think I like this. I'm going to track down the
poison mom
on the run with her little baby boy. Spike, get your equipment ready. The rest of you talk to research immediately. I want background.
The names of the lawyers involved. They always want to blab if we promise them face time. Get names of relatives of the mom. Any leads on folks who may know other folks who just may know where she is.”

As the crew started rising, Banes was still talking.

“I'm gonna locate this lady…” she said, glaring at the memo she held in her hand. It spelled out dismal news about the ratings of
Inside Source
. “Hey, little mommy,” she said, seeming to address the air, “I'm coming to find
you!”

6

F
IONA
C
AMERON WAS SLOWLY
rotating her water glass between her hands, clinking the ice slightly. Will could see that she was tired. In the candlelight of the corner table at Churchill's, their favorite restaurant, he saw the fatigue in her eyes, which were drooping. Her face, usually bright and electric with enthusiasm, was drawn—and a little pale.

“This concert tour really wore me out,” Fiona said.

“You do look tired,” Will responded. “Maybe it wasn't a good idea to take you out tonight.”

“Oh, no,” Fiona countered, brightening up. “I'm glad you did. The concerts went well. The Lord really blessed us. Wonderful crowds—receptive and warm.”

There was a pause—and then she added, “I missed you.”

“I missed you like crazy,” Will said. “I kept telling myself that when you came off this tour you wouldn't have to travel for a while. Then we could start spending more time together.”

Fiona looked down at the starched white tablecloth.

“Yes—before you went on tour my schedule was super heavy. That trial went on a week longer than any of us had planned. And, well…”

“And you missed the dinner we had scheduled…”

“I am so sorry,” Will said, his voice dropping.

“In fact, you were supposed to take me out here.”

“Which is why I brought you here tonight.”

“Your apology is accepted,” Fiona said, trying to smile again. “It's no big deal. I understand that your schedule gets harried
when you're in trial. I guess the thing that hurt the most was having to leave on tour without so much as a goodbye from you.”

“Look,” Will said, reaching over and taking both of her hands in his, “this is an important stage for us. I feel that. I hope you do too. You are incredibly busy. And so am I. But somehow we need to find a way to cut through the busyness. To focus on the really important things. You and me. Us. Where we are going in our relationship.”

Will paused for a second, and then he added, “Fiona, I don't want to lose you. More than anything in the world, I want you in my life.”

He was going to add something else, but as he gathered the words, the waitress came over to the table and refilled their glasses. Will pulled his hands back.

“How are we doing?” the waitress asked. “Can I get you anything else?”

After smiling and waving her off, Will tried to recoup. But before he could, Fiona spoke up.

“There's something I need to tell you.”

The look on Will's face must have been obvious because she quickly added, “Oh—it's nothing really that big. Just more of the same scheduling demons coming out…My recording company contacted me on the road,” she continued. “They reminded me that I need to finish the studio time on that CD.”

“What's the deadline?”

“They want me to go to their studio—either the one in New York or the one down in Nashville. I think I'll go to Nashville. Anyway, it needs to be done right away.”

“You're kidding!” Will exclaimed. “Tell them to back off. You're exhausted! You want me to call them?”

Fiona laughed. “Whoa. Will—it's okay. I'll tell them I need a couple of days of down time first.”

“How long will you be gone?”

“Probably a couple of weeks,” she said hesitantly.

She could see the disappointment in Will's face and quickly added, “Will, I don't want to be separated any more than you do.” Then after a few seconds of awkward silence she changed the subject.

“Tell me about you. Any new cases?”

“I already told you about the Sudan case with the murdered missionaries. I'm starting to dig in on that one.” Then Will added as an afterthought, “I turned down a child-abuse case. Never got much about the details. I told the parent I couldn't take it because my plate is pretty full right now.”

Fiona's eyebrow arched slightly. And then, after a moment, she spoke. “Where did you say that child abuse case was?”

“Well, the case is pending in Georgia. Why?”

“Oh, just something I'd been thinking,” Fiona replied, her voice trailing off slightly.

“What is it?”

“It's just that—if you'd have taken the case—that would have been typical, I guess.”

“Typical of what?” Will asked, starting to feel irritated.

“I know something about your law practice from when you handled my father's case. The trials you're involved in take you all over the country—sometimes to different parts of the world. They're very demanding, I know. So, I guess I've just been thinking…”

“Fiona, I'm not following you.”

“Will,” Fiona said after hesitating, “when we met…we weren't exactly young kids in college. I was pretty established in my music ministry. And you had been practicing law for a lot of years. People develop routines—they develop whole lives living by themselves. And then when it's time for a relationship…It's just that I want to know that I'm valued. That you look at our relationship as something more than just a bachelor's life but now with a woman that you go out with regularly. In a relationship, the way I see it, one and one don't make two. One and one make
one.
And every so often I get the feeling—maybe it's unfair
of me to say this—that you're not making a lot of accommodations in your career, and your life, for
us
.”

Will, stung by that comment, sat up straight in his chair and leaned forward slightly.

“There's something I just don't see here,” Will said. “I tell you about a case I'm
not
taking—a case that happens to be in Georgia. And then you use that as a basis for talking about how I haven't made any accommodations in my life. I told you I didn't take the case because I've got too much on my plate. Doesn't that mean that I'm trying to create a place for us?”

“No,” Fiona said bluntly. “I heard you saying that you couldn't quite fit it into your schedule, not that you had me in mind when you made the decision. Not that you should think about me every time a new client walks in the door—what I'm talking about is not the details of this case. I'm talking about our relationship. I just want to make sure that you're making a place for
us.
That you're willing to make sacrifices and adjustments in your life.”

“Sacrifices?” Will asked, his voice rising. “While we're on that subject, how about your recording session, which is going to take you out of state? And it's going to separate us—at a time when I thought we would really be able to start spending some time together. I'd never heard about this until you just dropped it on me, just now.”

“Will,” Fiona said, her voice filled with distress, “I told you about this recording session weeks ago. Don't you remember?”

Will shook his head with some embarrassment and shrugged.

Fiona managed a half-smile and reached out to touch his hand. “Will,” she said, “I want this to work just like you do. It's just going to take a lot of sacrifice—and a lot of adjustment. And it's going to take some change. Just like when you came to Christ. There's still a lot of change that has to take place there also.”

Will bristled. “So you're saying that I'm spiritually immature because my conversion came later in life than yours?”

“I didn't say that.”

“But I think that's what you meant,” Will replied.

Fiona was still holding his hand, and she squeezed it. “Will, darling, listen to me. God is doing great things in your life. I look at you—and I see nothing but a miracle. Please believe me when I say that.”

After a moment, Will looked up and smiled.

Then Fiona remembered something. “Oh, I almost forgot,” she said, reaching into her purse and pulling out a piece of paper. “You wanted me to make sure to remind you of the date we were arranging for the dinner at church for my dad—on the anniversary of Mom's death. We're scheduling a luncheon at the church, and here's the reminder.”

She passed the note over to Will, and as he glanced at the date and time, his countenance fell.

“What's wrong?” Fiona asked.

“Well…I think I've got a problem with this date,” Will said hesitatingly.

“I mentioned this date to
you
before I started making plans to set it up,” Fiona said, her eyes full of hurt.

“Well, if you did, I don't remember it,” Will said. “I don't have my calendar with me—but I'm absolutely certain this is the date that we've set up an all-day meeting between the State Department and the families of all those missionaries we're representing in our case against Sudan. It's taken us months to set that up. We've got people flying in from all over the country. A few people are even coming in from overseas.” Will leaned his head on his hands. “Man, this is a disaster.”

Fiona simply closed her eyes and shook her head.

The waitress appeared again.

“Any dessert?” she with a professionally cheery demeanor. “Mud pie is delicious. Berries and cream? We have a chef's specialty—”

“How about the check?” Will snapped.

After the waitress was gone, Will looked across the table. Fiona's eyes were filled with tears. She was resting her head on her hand, and her lip was quivering a bit.

“I think I'm just overtired. Would you please take me home?” she asked.

Will nodded. He searched for something to say. But not able to find the words, he turned in silence to watch the waitress hustling over to the table, bill in hand.

Inside, he was trying to ignore it—the pull of the swirling whirlpool, sucking the two of them down. Into the unspoken vagaries of miscommunication and broken trust, into the carefully plotted romantic plans that always seemed to go awry. Down into the ocean graveyard of drowned intentions. To the sandy bottom, where the failures of love rest in the dark, like some rusting vessel.

7

J
UDA
C
OUNTY PROSECUTOR
Harry Putnam was pacing back and forth behind his desk, his short, stocky frame occasionally bouncing on the balls of his feet to punctuate a point as he lectured the small circle of county staff assembled in his office.

“One—we still don't have our hands on Mary Sue Fellows or little Joshua. Two—we've got a hearing coming up in Joe Fellows' case at the end of this week. Three—like I said, we still haven't located the Fellows woman or her kid. Are you all starting to see a pattern in my comments this morning?”

Putnam stared at Otis Tracher, the tall, thin plainclothes detective with a bland expression and an unruly tuft of hair that seemed to defy combing. Tracher sat up a little straighter and volunteered a thought.

“I know that finding the perpetrator and her victim is the number-one priority here,” the detective said. “I've got two other officers working this in addition to myself.”