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“Is that good?”
“It’s better than hell,” she answered flatly. “InPurgatorio, there’s movement and light because the penitent souls have admitted their sin. So they’re not sinners, they’re purging themselves. It takes work. They have to use free will to ‘winnow good from evil.’ I have hope for John, and all of us.”
“Good, Mom.” I took her hand, strangely comforted.
“We were in hell before, honey. We just didn’t know it.”
Suddenly, we heard the door open in the back of the courtroom,and I turned to see John enter with his lawyer, Natalie Christiano. My brother’s expression was impassive, which was trademark John in the clutch. He had on a silk tie and his best Brioni suit, and we joked yesterday that white-collar criminals dressed better than schlubs like me. He’d entered Gamblers Anonymous as a condition of bail and was in a better place since his arrest. We’d compared notes, since AA and GA were companion programs, and I told him he was the next Relapse Virgin.
My mother squeezed my hand as John reached us, and Natalie went ahead to counsel table. John paused to say goodbye, kissing Nancy on the cheek, shaking my father’s hand and Martin’s, and kissing my mother and finally Gabby, whose lower lip trembled. His dry eye met her weepy one with a brave smile. He’d forgiven her for turning him in, and I was proud of him.
I eyed John, and we shook hands, saying nothing. We’d talked more since his arrest than we ever had before and we’d said everything we had to say. We’d resolved some old hurts, and I told him I loved him. He told me he loved me, too, and yesterday, he’d managed to find some dark humor in going to prison for three years.
TJ, I got three years, and you only got one. I win.
Chapter Sixty-Two
I never expected to be in another courtroom so soon, especially not with the man who tried to kill me, but I was learning to expect the unexpected. This time we were at the Chester County Justice Center, and sitting in the witness stand was Viktor Solkov, a fortysomething thug whose entire face I was seeing for the first time. He had light eyes, angular cheekbones, and a scar on his chin. The last time I’d seen him, he had on a ball cap and sunglasses and was chasing me down a hallway at Hessian Post Plaza with a gun.
I couldn’t take my eyes off Solkov, and he avoided my gaze from behind the black stem microphone. He looked freshly shaved, and his blond hair was newly cut. He was dressed in a cheap suit bought for court. I wanted him to pay for what he tried to do to me, along with Mortensen and the man at the top, who masterminded the conspiracy.
Solkov had pleaded guilty to criminal conspiracy and attempted first-degree murder, as had Mortensen, who had testified yesterday, also charged with criminal solicitation. Both men were serving seven-year sentences on three counts of the crimes, for me, Gabby, and my father. The two had gotten a lenient sentence in return fortestifying today against the man who had hired them, the CEO of Fournette Labs himself, Dr. Carl Bostwick.
Dr. Bostwick sat at the defense table in a well-tailored gray suit that coordinated with his steely gray hair and wire-rimmed bifocals. He had been Fournette CEO for the past eleven years, so he was wealthy enough to hire Deidre Yler, a well-known Philadelphia lawyer who sat stiffly next to him in a no-nonsense dark suit. Bostwick had chosen to go to trial, a savvy move given that the only evidence linking him to the crimes was the testimony of Mortensen and Solkov, plus a security-camera video of him meeting Mortensen in a public parking garage. Mortensen testified that the video showed the conversation in which Bostwick had hired him to kill Gabby and me, but his testimony couldn’t be verified without audio.
“May I approach the witness, Your Honor?” Assistant District Attorney Matthew Nolan was tall and thin in a pin-striped suit, with a nimbleness in the courtroom that made it look easy.
“Yes,” answered Judge Rati-Jio, who had presided over my guilty plea, back in the day. If she was surprised to see me return as a crime victim instead of a criminal, it didn’t show.
“Now, Mr. Solkov, you’ve testified that you went to Hessian Post Plaza on the day in question with instructions. Who gave you these instructions?”
“My cousin Denver Mortensen.”
“Did he do this in person or by phone?”
“In person.”
“Where did this conversation take place?”
“At home, in my apartment over the garage. It’s his garage apartment, really. I live with him.”
“Was anyone else present during this conversation?”
“No.”
“When did this conversation take place?”
“Sometime last May, mid-May, I forget exactly. Denver, uh, Mr. Mortensen said they needed me to replace some guy that got killed by a truck.”
Yler shot to her pumps. “Objection, Your Honor. That statement should be stricken as hearsay.”
Nolan pivoted smoothly to the bench. “Your Honor, it falls within the hearsay exception for out-of-court declarations of one co-conspirator against another, made during the conspiracy and in furtherance of the common design.”
Judge Rati-Jio nodded. “The objection’s overruled. Go ahead, Mr. Nolan.”
Nolan faced Solkov. “You may answer. Do you know the name of the man you replaced?”
“Yeah, Barry Rigel.”
