Hidden Summit

these proceedings, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. And he had four attorneys up front, more assistants in the gallery along with his distinguished-looking family and two priests.
    On the other side of the courtroom, divvied up like the bride’s side and the groom’s side, sat a couple of cheap-looking young women with men who had a disreputable look about them—Randolph’s associates, perhaps?
    At one point Mathis looked straight at Conner and gave him a half smile and nod, almost a welcoming gesture. Welcome to the party, son! It was impossible to picture him in an orange jumpsuit. If he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he couldn’t imagine him doing what he’d done. It was, in a word, incomprehensible.
    And Regis Mathis did not expect to be convicted.
    Conner wondered if he’d been too optimistic. If he were a seated jury member it would be hard for him to imagine this stately, polite and reserved man as the kind of cold-blooded killer who could put a bullet in a man’s head, drag his body out of a car and heft it into a Dumpster. Harder still, if a meticulous man such as Regis Mathis, a man who constantly pulled at his crisp white shirt cuffs, wanted someone dead, why didn’t he hire it out? Why get his own hands dirty? He was, after all, richer than God.
    Conner didn’t expect him to be convicted, either. While the story was completely true, it was unbelievable. If it had been any other kind of murder, maybe. But this kind? In a dingy alley, bullet to the head, tossed in a Dumpster? A victim with duct tape over his mouth and binding his wrists and ankles? Not this man, this very classy man who endowed charities and endorsed politicians.
    He was required to be in court the next day, or at least in the building, available. He had a brief temptation to buy an equally expensive suit, though he knew it wouldn’t look the same on him as it looked on Mathis.
    While he paid attention to the testimony of cops, homicide detectives and other officials who had been on the scene, all he could think about was that he couldn’t wait until the day was done and he could call Leslie and Katie. And he was afraid to call them. He wasn’t sure how he could keep from saying, It’s hopeless. I’m going to be in hiding for the rest of my life. And anyone who throws their lot in with me will be hiding, too.
    When court was dismissed for the day, Conner exited with his cop and waited in the hallway for the room to empty. Then he doubled back to the courtroom and said, “Give me a second with the D.A.” Then he reentered the courtroom. At the front table, Max was speaking quietly with one of his associates as they both shuffled papers into their briefcases. Conner came up behind them and cleared his throat.
    Max turned. “Yes, Conner?”
    Conner looked around to be sure they weren’t overheard by any bystanders. Then he looked back at Max. “You’re never going to get him, are you?”
    “I am going to,” Max said confidently.
    “He doesn’t look like a killer,” Conner said. “If I were a juror—”
    “I have a lot of faith in the system,” Max said. “What we’re going to do now is deliver the evidence we’ve prepared, solid evidence, irrefutable evidence, and win the day. That’s what we’re going to do.”
    “And you’re counting on me? ”
    “You’re the only eyewitness to the crime, but you’re not the only thing we’ve got. We have a motive.”
    “Care to share?” he asked with a tinge of sarcasm.
    “Your wife wasn’t the only person hanging around that drug-infested shit hole. There was another person of interest there. A person Dickie Randolph took great joy in messing up and filling with drugs and alcohol and probably dirty sex. Mathis’s twenty-one-year-old daughter. The light of his life.”
    Conner’s eyes grew large. “Are you going to be able to present that?”
    Max lifted his chin. “If it’s not suppressed. It is his daughter....”
    Conner looked at him for a long, still moment. He finally understood why a man like Mathis would take it upon himself to deal out revenge rather than outsource the job. But could it be proven? And would the jury ever hear it? If they heard it, would they believe it of this good, classy, God-fearing man?
    He gave a nod—what were his choices? And then he said, “We’re fucked.”
    Conner and his cop left the courthouse from the side door and walked around the block to the parking lot because Regis Mathis was playing to the