Chapter Fourteen

The pounding of the gavel at the front of the room acted like a power button that made the robots sitting in rows facing the front all stand up and begin to file out. A dream of Scott’s that he never told anyone but Edward was to sue the court for theft of his precious time�"a necessary evil, he always called it.

Edward never complained. He gave his client a short handshake as she thanked him profusely. She had invited him over for dinner at her house a few times, but he always refused, wanting to stay professional. He gave her a few last, reassuring words as he turned to his briefcase on the table and the short, dark-skinned woman with curly hair met her wife and son near the door past Scott. She had hired Edward for a hit-and-run case that cost the life of her brother. Edward was happy to accommodate. The case had been on for weeks, and had been shifting in his direction for that long. The only reason the case didn’t take longer than a week was that the driver was a medium-ranked member of the Spartans gang, and the snake-eyed judge was taking his arguments at a fraction of the opposition’s. Still, there were corners to turn and knives to twist. He knew too well where they were. All Edward had to do was press them for a bit longer.

After she left and the murmur behind him died down, he was among the last few in the room. From behind him came Scott, surprising him with a slap on his shoulder.

“Great job out there,” Scott said with a smirk. “The b*****d had it coming. He’ll get what he deserves.” He was dressed in a business suit appropriate for the court. His long black hair was uncharacteristically tied back and the stiff collar of his suit forced him to stand up straighter than he would like. It was almost funny.

Edward shook his head, not looking up from his briefcase. “It doesn’t matter what I do. If the Spartans want him free, he’ll be free. This city is sick.”

“It matters,” he said. “Justice for that woman’s brother matters. I saw you on the news this morning on a fluff piece. They made you out to be a chink in the Spartans’ armour. It’s kind of a miracle. You’re giving people some real hope. And I know for a fact that you’re making your father proud.”

Edward nodded and gave Scott a smirk. The sweat under his suit and on his forehead made it hard to show it, but he really was happy to see him. Scott really didn’t deserve to live in Hillborough. He was such a simple, happy person who would help out his friends to the point of making them feel guilty. Whenever there was a story on the news about the Spartans getting away with a robbery or murder, he would look away awkwardly and start working on his cases right after. He wasn’t wildly successful as a lawyer, but he made a living. He wasn’t born in the city, but moved because he claimed he felt a calling.

Scott smiled back. “I’ll see you at home.”

He had just barely started walking away when Edward’s cell phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number. With a heavy sigh, Edward answered the call with, “Edward Montgomery.”

“Hi, Mr. Montgomery,” said the woman on the other end of the line. The police sirens in the background made Edward forget to breathe. The woman paused for a bit and finally spit out, “This is the Hillborough Police Department. You were on your mother’s contacts. Her house has been burned down.”

“Is she alright?” Edward asked, the spasm in his throat as automatic as a flinch. It was a feeling that didn’t seem real. All of the air in his stomach suddenly disappeared, and the change in pressure made his throat clench into a knot. It didn’t hurt, though. It could have been the lack of understanding, but the only thing he felt was dazed.

“She inhaled a lot of smoke, but she’s going to be fine. She was unconscious on the street when we got here. Your number was the first contact on her phone.”

“Can I come down there?” he didn’t realize, but he was coughing as if the smoke was affecting him somehow. Her saying that was like a reminder to cough.

“Yes, of course,” the woman sighed. Edward grunted as affirmation and picked up his briefcase. The numbness of his hands made it feel like air. Running down the hallway to his car, he couldn’t hear anything but the pounding of his own footsteps.

Despite the chaos, his thoughts were collected. He surprised himself with how collected his thoughts were. Ideas trickled in through his ear as he looked around out the window, each detail prompting new ones. He had made so many enemies in his career. It was obvious that whoever started the fire targeted his mother to hurt him. The Spartans had honour, he thought. They’d said so numerous times in recent memory, so Edward assumed that his mother was safe. Why did they target her and not him? It would be much harder to find her address than his. How did they do it? Edward had spent a few months in law school looking at arson, and it was significantly more difficult to set a house on fire from the outside. As soon as he set eyes on the wreck, he would be able to estimate where it was started from. Each time he turned the steering wheel, the tires of his car screeched against the road. The ride felt like a few seconds, and soon he had made it halfway across town to his mother’s house.

It didn’t look like his life. It looked like a picture from the internet of a charred, ruined house with smoke shooting into the sky from all corners and broken beams falling to the ground. It looked like the hideous thing that his clients told him stories about through choked sobs. The first thing he noticed was the room he played piano with his father in. It now didn’t have a roof and half of it was embers. And then right below it, he saw the spray paint on the sidewalk in front of the house from down the driveway.

There was no reason he couldn’t have figured it out when the woman first told him, but it seemed so brain-smashingly apparent that it hurt. His address wasn’t known to any of the Spartans, but Fay knew where his mother lived, and the symbol he saw on the back of her jacket the last time he saw her was the same as the paint on the sidewalk. The two symbols lined up in his mind, relaying over each other. Suddenly, Edward could think about his mother, and she was like a dam blocking him from comprehending anything else happening around him. With his car still down the driveway, he threw the door open and ran down to the house.

The fire had partially caught to the houses near it, but most of the wreckage was contained. From the look of it, there had definitely been gasoline involved. It was a scorching hot summer day, so it was easy for the fire to spread. Fire trucks were strewn around the premise disturbing the peace with their alarms, and firefighters were talking to each other about something close to one of the trucks. From the way it looked, the entire left side of the house had been destroyed, and the roof in that area had collapsed. The right side was holding up, but rebuilding there would undoubtedly involve tearing that down too. The tree in the front yard was gone too. There would normally be berries falling from it that time of year.

A woman, a few inches taller than him in a firefighter’s uniform, walked up to Edward from behind the fire truck. He recognized her voice as the one he spoke to on the phone.

“Edward Montgomery?” she asked.

He nodded. He didn’t take his eyes off the wreck.

“The fire had been happening for about twenty-five minutes before we came. It’s best to stay out of the house for now. It also appears that the Spartans had stored a couple boxes of drugs in there to frame her, but you could make a good case for her innocence with that.”

“Someone started this fire,” Edward said.

The woman nodded, seeming surprised. “We were thinking the same.”

“Her name is Fenella Burgess, and she’s a member of the Spartans.” The words just seemed so natural to say, like they trickled off his tongue. “She’s the only one who knew this address and has motivation to hurt me.”

“What motive is that?” the woman asked.

Edward wanted to speak, but something wouldn’t let the words out of his stomach. It occurred to him that he’d never spoken the story out loud before. Seeing the bewildered face of the woman in front of him, he stopped trying and sighed, “It’s a long story.”

“Your mother is in the hospital right now. I’ll connect you with someone at the police department and you can tell your story there.”