The Past Never Ends Read online

  THE PAST NEVER ENDS

  Jackson Burnett

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  © 2012 Jackson Burnett

  All Rights Reserved.

  Except for brief quotations in critical articles and reviews and other fair use as allowed by the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, this publication may not be copied, reproduced, or duplicated by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission of the author. This book was originally published in softcover and e-book formats by Deadly Niche Press, an imprint of AWOC.COM PUBLISHING, Denton, Texas, in 2012.

  For my own Holly Golightly

  wherever she may be

  and

  to Marilynn always

  PROLOGUE

  The image shimmered, then burned.

  Attorney Chester Morgan swam another lap in the indoor pool. The cold and wet enlivened, awoke. Did he have a brief due that day or a court appearance scheduled? He tried to remember but...

  The image would not fade.

  The early morning light glowed through the opaque windows of the Downtown Vivia YMCA in diffuse gold, and the bitter scent of chlorine hung in the humid air.

  Morgan remembered.

  He could not forget.

  William Harrison had been a good swimmer -- like everything else he had done. Competent, straight, no fanfare. His every act done with modest ease.

  Morgan tread water.

  William Harrison at sixty-four swam in this place as if thirty-four. He had graduated from Princeton when Princeton meant gentleman, scholar, and athlete. Morgan dove underwater to eerie silence.

  The image would not fade.

  Lawyer Morgan admired Oilman Harrison, what he knew of him. In the hour or two before downtown offices opened, William Harrison had swum with the rest of the businessmen and women at the Downtown YMCA as if he were one of them. Harrison was, and he wasn't. Why didn't he build an indoor pool at his mansion? He wouldn't have noticed his lawn smaller or his dollars fewer if he had. Morgan popped his head out of the water and heard footsteps echo.

  The footsteps had echoed that day, too.

  Morgan didn't represent William Harrison. He didn't represent anyone like him, and didn't really want to either. Morgan was subservient to no one except the law and his own conscience. He told himself that again as he gently stroked the water.

  Harrison was wealthy: old oil money. He inherited most, made some, and lost a lot, but Key Petroleum, Inc. -- Harrison's family company -- didn't go under during Oklahoma's oil bust of the nineteen-eighties and it didn't sell out in the nineteen-nineties. On the southwestern prairie, an occasional sign would flash a gold neon key unlocking a blue lock, marking an old filling station Key Petroleum established years ago.

  Chester Morgan pushed off from the turquoise-tiled side of the swimming pool and the water spread against his body as he swam another lap.

  He would not forget.

  William Harrison spoke honest words with grace and knew the name of the attendant in the locker room and every member of that young man's family. The oilman's picture at charity fundraisers never appeared on the society page of "The Vivia Daily Sentinel." Harrison didn't waste his time with them. Yet, an anonymous donor saved the opera from bankruptcy one year and had funded a library for the neglected and dilapidated east side. Harrison was different perhaps.

  Morgan hadn't really enjoyed his morning swim since...

  Would the image haunt this room forever?

  Morgan floated on his back and looked at the acoustical tiles on the high ceiling. He wondered.

  Harrison's Key Petroleum, Inc. operated clean and fair. Unlike some small independent oil companies, Key didn't conduct business as if its corporate logo was a bulls-eye for Vivia's trial attorneys. The company filed suit only when it had to and when it knew its cause was just.

  Morgan had heard stories: A Key lease hound -- better at persuading farmers to sign oil and gas conveyances than at black jack-- got into trouble with some Las Vegas loan sharks. William Harrison paid them off from his own funds and never collected anything back except loyalty. Key Petroleum refused to sue a contractor who defaulted on a drilling job and cost Harrison thousands. It would have forced the contractor, an old friend, into bankruptcy. Some things are more important, the oilman knew. Harrison and his company had made it through all the crashes and booms of that roller coaster industry, though, an accomplishment not allowed to the spendthrifts, gamblers, or incompetents.

  Morgan closed his eyes and saw it again.

  Harrison -- thinning silver hair and apple green eyes, tall, gracefully aged, lean, and a tan face wrinkled with life and living. He had an ex-wife somewhere and an estranged daughter somewhere else. He lived by himself and sometimes even his shadow seemed solitary.

  Morgan swam another lap and got out of the pool.

  The image shimmered, then burned.

  The image of William Harrison's lifeless body floating alone in that same YMCA swimming pool would not fade.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Madge Jorgeson provided the best free trip in Vivia. She had operated the elevator in the DeSoto Building since 1968. For more than the last thirty years or so, no one who rode with her ever felt dizzy from riding too fast or jarred from a sudden start or stop nor threatened by devouring automatic closing doors. The DeSoto now stood alone in its splendid art deco. Seven stories of shiny silver, black marble, and mirrors. No others like it, and no changes really since 1928, the year it was built. Well, perhaps one -- a powerful boom box squeezed between Madge's tall chair and elevator wall. She listened to talk shows and music all day.

  "'Gonna be a hard winter if it's this cold in October, isn't it?" Madge said as Chester Morgan stepped into the elevator on his way to his fourth-floor office.

  "Yes, ma'am," he agreed, his face still tingling from the prairie-driven wind which had blasted him on his walk from the Downtown Y. "Yes, ma'am."

  "The greatest threat to this country is the decay of its moral fabric. We must be vigilant," spoke a clear voice with an accent from nowhere. "We must be foes of obscenity and degradation in all forms..."

  "When did you start to listen to evangelists, Madge?"

  "Or our culture will seethe into life-sucking degeneracy like San Francisco or New York and that is why..."

  "That's no evangelist; that's the..." Madge started.

  "...purging Ninth Avenue of all vice and pornography--in whatever form it may take..."

  "That's the new chief of police."

  "...is this administration's top priority."

  "Not so new now, I guess. Scary, isn't it?"

  Kurt Hale had been brought in from some Southern California desert town to fulfill the mayor's campaign pledge two years before. A law and order police chief. Reported crime was down but so too were alive arrests -- too many hooligans were committing suicide by shooting themselves in the chests just as the police arrived to apprehend them.

  "Whatever you say, Mister Morgan."

  The elevator soothed to a stop.

  Every year, the American Bar Association chooses three law offices as best designed in the nation. Any of these could be plopped down in any American city, and no one would know from which metropolis or region it came. A lot of law offices are like that. Others advertise: A framed copy of a jury's two-million-dollar verdict in the lobby; or an old deed to ten acres of bottomland in Ohio with the senior partner's family name on it; or newspaper clippings on hall walls flashing the brilliance of the attorneys
who office there; or decorator furniture glitzy with gaudy wealth.

  Chester Morgan's office was like none of these.

  A huge oil painting of colorful, humorous cowboys and cowgirls and UFO's hung on one wall of the reception area -- a payment in kind from a client who might become an avant-garde Western artist. On another wall, two portraits -- Morgan's grandmother, a Progressive Wisconsin Republican who as a young woman came alone to southeastern Oklahoma to help the Choctaws. The other -- his grandfather -- a white-haired eccentric Mississippi evangelist who after a revival one night married the Yankee woman and took the tent down forever.

  The furniture was estate sale special and bargain basement comfortable and looked like it belonged in the De Soto building except for a big, gray metal desk -- vintage World War II and bulletproof -- near the middle of the room. One of the ugliest, but most utilitarian, pieces of furniture built. Morgan would never get rid of it; the best trial attorney he had known practiced behind it for forty years. Now a young woman sat there with a pencil in her mouth, her right hand on a computer's keyboard, a phone to her ear, and her other hand in a file drawer. Shawn -- the receptionist, bookkeeper, business manager, courier, brawn, and face of the law office.

  Morgan smiled at her as he picked up his messages and went into his office. It all worked at this moment. He was here and ready. Morgan had been appalled when the attorney for President Reagan's assassin, after his most famous client's acquittal, said, "Another day, another dollar." Morgan felt like that some days, too, but he wouldn't admit it and never before cameras or journalists. Being an attorney was a matter of trust -- not only to your client but to yourself and to that ephemeral goddess: justice. Too many days end feeling like "Another day, another dollar" and perhaps the law practice was no longer trust but pandering, prostituting yourself and her. It all worked just now. In the mornings, it felt like trust.

  Chester Morgan began to return his calls. Mrs. Delano was worried about the probate hearing that afternoon for her late husband's estate. Chester assured her it would go fine, no problems, he would take care of her. Mr. Miller had been sucked into another pyramid scheme and he wanted Chester to look at the papers. Mail a copy in, I'll look at them, Morgan told him. Chester picked up another message, began to dial, and stopped. He looked at the picture of Cassie on his desk. His wife, now ex-wife, six years past. Where had the last post card come from? Wyoming? Vermont? South Carolina? He wanted to believe he didn't remember.

  Rat-tat-tat! A knock like fingernails tapping sounded at the door. He knew the knock and yelled, "Come on in." The door flashed open.

  "Mister Morgan, I know you don't like appointments first thing in the morning..." began the slender, tall woman who dressed like a model from Vogue albeit one whose wardrobe is budgeted from an administrative assistant's wages. Marylin, the world's best legal secretary, continued speaking, "but this man called at 8:01 this morning and said he had to see you. You know, urgent and important. He said as soon as possible. I believed him so -- he's waiting out front. As you say, you never know."

  "No, you never do," replied Morgan. "Incidentally, it's a good morning, isn't it?"

  "They all are. When I quit thinking that, I might as well drive to the morgue and turn myself in -- save the ambulance expense."

  Morgan had heard that before, but had wanted to hear it again.

  "We really have enough to keep us busy," he said. He paused. "What does the man need?"

  "He wouldn't tell me. Acted kind of scared. And, as you say..."

  "I know. It's either real bad, nonsense, or neurotic. It won't hurt to talk to him a minute and see, I guess."

  Morgan looked at the form new clients or potential clients had to fill out. Alan Kinman. 24 years old. Kinman Lawn Mowing Service -- sole proprietor. Gave an address in Follette District -- a decaying east side working class neighborhood.

  A gaunt young man with sunburned pink skin and muddy-water colored hair followed Marylin into the room. He wore Buddy Holly black-framed glasses with fingerprints on the lenses and a face scarred by acne. Marylin introduced Alan Kinman. He carried a high school yearbook and a newspaper.

  "Have you been to see an attorney before, Alan?" Morgan asked.

  The man strained to speak and then shook his head.

  "For a lot of people, it's like visiting the dentist," Morgan said.

  Alan Kinman tilted his head and tried to smile.

  "Except that it doesn't hurt as much -- most of the time."

  He did smile -- an awkward, crooked smile.

  "Let me tell you how I practice. First, everything you tell me is kept confidential unless you tell me otherwise. Likewise with what you tell Marylin or Shawn. Even that you are here is confidential. In return, I expect candor. The law depends on the facts and the facts of every case are different. My questions may seem irrelevant or may embarrass you. They aren't, and aren't intended to. I simply need to know so I can advise you properly. Do you have any questions?"

  The skinny man shook his head tight.

  "You have given me information about you," Morgan continued, picking up the client intake sheet. "You should have some information about me. I grew up in Southeastern Oklahoma and graduated from the University of Oklahoma law school fifteen years ago. I've been practicing here since. I represent individuals and small businesses. I may not be the best, but I try my best and --"

  "Henry Voss says you are." Alan Kinman spoke, his voice pinched like the high scale of an oboe.

  "'Henry refer you?"

  "Yeah."

  Henry Voss operated a two-lift garage and rarely said more than two words at a time. Chester Morgan had represented him for over three years and the most Henry Voss had ever said after a job well done was "OK." Morgan decided to take a bottle of Jack Daniels to him the next time his car was in the shop. Maybe not for Alan Kinman but for the compliment.

  "Well, what can I do for you?"

  Marylin had been watching Alan Kinman. She began to take notes.

  "I-I don't know if you can help me. I-I don't know if I need a lawyer -- or what." The man's voice squeaked. He twisted his head, shook it, and took a visible breath. "There's something about a whole situation that-that doesn't seem right."

  "Sometimes they aren't."

  "I--I don't know exactly where to start." With blank eyes, the pock-faced youth looked at Marylin and turned red. A big tattoo of the Sacred Heart on the back of his left hand seemed to pulse.

  "Do you need anything?" she asked. Her voice soothed, eased. She did it well.

  "No. I'm fine. Well, you see. You see there was this girl. We went to Bryan High School together. Her name was Tanya Everly."

  Morgan nodded.

  "She-she was a real pretty girl. She was my friend." Alan Kinman looked down and was silent. "She liked me. I've got a picture of her." The newspaper slid from his lap as he popped out of his chair and fumbled the yearbook open onto Morgan's desk. "There she is."

  Morgan looked. The pages stayed flat as if opened there many times before. Tanya Everly. Light hopeful eyes. An elfin face, pudgy cute with baby fat. A take-you-in-and-cuddle-you smile and a glob of bleached blonde hair mussed cheap. Kinman was right. She was a pretty girl.

  "She's dead," Alan Kinman said. "She's dead."

  "I'm sorry."

  The young man shuffled through the pages of the newspaper and awkwardly folded it back together. "That doesn't tell it all," he said as he handed it to Morgan.

  A four-line Vivia Daily Sentinel obituary from three and a half weeks before. Name, age, address, next of kin, funeral home.

  "There's nothing else in the paper about it," Alan Kinman said. "Nothing nowhere."

  "You would think a person's life would deserve more than four lines but, for most people, that's all they print," Morgan said.

  "Yeah, but they didn't say anything about how she died. That's-that's why I come to see you. You see, it didn't happen the way they all said it happened."

  "What do you mean?"

  "S
he always wanted to be a singer, but she never made it out of Kiowa Heights. Y'know what that means." He paused to silence. "Y'know, sex for sale. Getting naked for money, that kind of thing. I hated she lived like that but she did. I don't know if she had any choice."

  "Sometimes people don't, and sometimes they don't think they do."

  "Well, somebody killed her." His voice burst louder and pitched higher. "They say it was an accident but somebody killed her."

  "How do you know somebody killed her?"

  "I just do. I-I just know it. The kind of people around her and everything."

  "You know, Mister Kinman, when somebody tells me they have a friend who is having a legal problem, most of the time there's no friend at all. It's that person who is having the problem. Or somebody calls me up and says their brother-in-law's attorney is telling them something and they want to know if that attorney is telling them right, there is no brother-in-law. It's just somebody wanting a free second opinion. You come in here and tell me you know it's a murder, but you can't tell me why. You know what that makes me think?"

  Alan looked down and madly clicked his fingernails against each other. "I guess it's kind of like those cartoons on television I saw when I was a kid. The bear goes to the beehive to get the honey and the only thing he gets is all the bees coming after him and if all the bees come after me, that's OK. I-I may never have done nothing right by her when she was alive but I'm going to do this right, if I never do anything else. It wasn't no accident, and they can't honestly say it is."

  "Who says it was?"

  "The police. That's who."

  "How do you know that?"

  "Her mom says so. Everyone down in Kiowa Heights knows the cops are just treating it as an accident. 'Just another hooker. Treat it as an accident.' Don't have to deal with it that way."

  "If there were anyway to turn it into a homicide, the cops would. Have you asked anyone at the police department about it?"

  "Do you think they'd listen to someone like me?" the gaunt young man asked, stated.