Page 71 of The Best Lawyer
“Cass, stop.”
“That’s a work stoppage,” I said. “Effective March 11th. That’s three days before Tom Loomis died. Do I have to say it?”
Nothing. Stony silence.
“You told Detective DePaul that you weren’t in town the morning Tom Loomis died. Three hours ago, you sat in front of a jury. In front of me. And you said you were there. 1253 Bettony Road. You stayed overnight. You weren’t in town. You lied, Joe. My God. You lied about your alibi.”
“I didn’t say I was at Bettony Road.” His nostrils flared. “Cass, I was …”
“Stop! Don’t. Do not tell me another lie. You weren’t there that morning, were you? Or the night before. What you told the police wasn’t true.”
“No. It wasn’t true. But this isn’t what you think.”
Of all the things he could have said, that might have been the worst. “What I think? Joe, it doesn’t matter what I think. You just committed perjury, didn’t you?”
He didn’t answer.
It got hard to breathe. The room started to spin. In my mind’s eye, I saw Tom Loomis’s dead body. His blood. The murder weapon.
“A hunting knife.” I choked out the words. I’d seen dozens of them. Eric had one. My father. My brothers. Then, something came over me. I felt possessed.
“Where is it?” I shrieked. I pushed past my brother and ran out into the garage. He kept a workbench there. I went to it,scanning the shelves. He had at least ten different screwdrivers on the table. Rage took hold again. I swept my arm over the table and smashed every tool on the bench to the ground.
“Cass!” Joe yelled.
No, not the tool bench. The pole barn out back. That’s where Joe kept all his hunting and fishing equipment. In the back of my mind, I knew this was ridiculous. Was I expecting to find an empty sheath matching the murder weapon? He probably had a dozen hunting knives. But logic had left my brain. Emotion ruled. I ran out the side door of the garage and over to the barn. I yanked the knob on the service door but it didn’t budge. The barn was locked.
“Cass!”
Joe got a hold of me. He grabbed me by the shoulders and spun me around. “What are you doing?”
“Where is it?” I said. “It’s not in there, is it?”
“What?”
“Your knife!”
Joe’s face drained of all color. His pupils shrank to pinpoints. “My knife? Cass. What do you think I …”
“Did you do it? Did you kill Tom? She could have let you in. It would explain …”
My brother had never so much as laid a hand on me. But an instant after I said it, he shook me once, hard enough that my teeth rattled. He didn’t hurt me. It wasn’t truly violent. But it unleashed something in me. I lunged at him. If he hadn’t caught me by the wrists, I don’t know if I would have scratched his eyes out. I certainly thought about it.
“Stop it,” he said.
“What happened?” I asked him. I knew this was the wrong question to ask. I couldn’t know it if Joe truly did have something to do with Tom Loomis’s murder. But I wasn’t a lawyer anymore at that moment. I didn’t even feel like a sister.
“I didn’t kill Tom Loomis,” he said.
Would he lie to me about that, too? I couldn’t fathom it. Joe and I never lied to each other. Not once. We may have withheld things from each other, but never an outright lie.
I trusted Joe. He had been my person for almost our whole lives. We’d gone through the worst moments of each of our lives together. The death of our mother when we were adolescents. We both had to grow up that very day and protect Matty and Vangie who were both barely more than toddlers. Through the chaotic abuse of our father at the height of his alcoholism. Together, we’d fought off a system that threatened to take our little brother and sister away forever. I could count on him no matter what. And he could count on me.
His words echoed through me.I didn’t kill Tom Loomis.It wasn’t enough.
“Where were you?” I asked. “Why did you lie about it?”
A muscle jumped in Joe’s jaw. “I’m sorry. I just panicked. That’s all I’m going to tell you.” He let go of me. Oh God, I thought. I knew that look. We had the ability to have whole conversations with each other without saying a word.
