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“Advil. Maybe Excedrin. Nothing more.”
He reaches in his pocket and sets a bagged prescription bottle on the table. “We found this on his bedside table.”
Holy fuck. I reach for it before she can, reading the Vicodin label dated a year ago. “I didn’t give this to him,” she says to me. “I swear to you, Cole.” She looks at Waller. “I didn’t give this to him and I wouldn’t have even given up my pills back then. I was addicted. I wanted every one for myself.”
“We’ll let you get out of this,” he says. “We’ll make a deal. You give us your father, we’ll give you privacy and freedom.”
I laugh. “You’re a piece of work. The man took it from her. Or she dropped it. Not to mention there is no cause of death or toxicology report.”
“That’ll take weeks,” he reminds me, looking at Tara. “Weeks of bad PR, but a good amount of time for me to talk to your mother. She wouldn’t take down your father last year, but now, she’s protecting her daughter.”
Tara leans forward. “Leave my mother out of this.”
“Even if he has Vicodin in his system,” I say, “you’re going to have a hard time proving a year-old prescription was the source.”
Lori walks back into the room and kneels beside me. She holds out her phone and is showing me the cover to David Curry’s book when Waller asks, “If you didn’t give him the pills, how did he get them?”
Lori’s eyes go wide, and she says, “I know how.” She tabs through pages on her phone and then lets me read a section of the book. It takes two paragraphs for me to decide I’m really falling the fuck in love with this woman. “Read it to him,” I order.
She stands up and starts to read:
“It was a dark time in my life, like a cloud hovered just above me, waiting to rain down more and more despair. Everyone thought I was on top of the world but I was in hell.”
“What does that have to do with the damn pill bottle?” Waller grumbles.
“He was suicidal,” Lori says. “There’s every reason to believe he killed himself.”
“He never said suicidal.”
“He all but said it,” Lori argues. “A jury will see that.”
“And yet the press hasn’t said a word about it. Not even they read that as suicidal.”
“This book is two years old and it’s one paragraph,” Lori argues.
“Exactly the point,” Waller counters. “But even if he did kill himself, your client gave him the drugs to do it.”
“I didn’t give him those drugs,” Tara growls. “He had to have stolen them from me.”
“Tell a jury,” Waller says.
I stand up. “This interview is over.”
“Wait!” Lori says. “just—give me a minute.” She holds up a finger. “His own words,” she says, and reads: “I even went so far as to hoard pills. I collected them. I knew that one day, I’d need them. One day it would all be too much.”
She lowers her phone. “He took them from her.”
“Oh, thank God,” Tara says. “Or not. Damn him. Damn all of this.” Tara gets up and says, “I need air,” and leaves the room.
Waller smirks. “He didn’t say he took other people’s pills. That’s not enough to shut me down.”
“In other words,” I say, “you plan to torment her through the press, and jeopardize her career, unless she makes up a fantasy about her father to end this.”
He holds out his hands. “I just want her to tell the truth.”
I press my hands on the table, and lean toward him. “I will sue you, your boss, the city, and everyone in between if you slander her or release her private medical history. No one else has it.”
“I’m sure with TMZ and the random tabloids, someone is looking. Offer her the deal. Her for her father.” He looks at Lori. “Choose your sides wisely. It would not be smart to start your career on the wrong side of the law.” It’s a threat to go after her and he looks at me. Our eyes hold for several beats, and he adds, “If you don’t offer her the deal, you will look suspicious, like you aren’t protecting her interest over her father’s. If you do offer her the deal, and she takes it, you look like you represented a crook and took down police officers, all in the name of a criminal. If she doesn’t take the deal, and her world ruptures, you become part of the internal bleeding. Good luck.” He smirks and walks toward the door.
