“How, you ask? Well I’ll tell you. First you almost tore Jamison’s balls off on a night me and Ski could make the call.” He extended one finger of his left hand to indicate ‘one’. “Two” the second finger extended, “You did it in a jurisdiction where O’Brian is the DA. The same O’Brian, whose wife that asshole Jamison talked into going on a month long European vacation with him; you can imagine how much credit the DA gave to Jamison’s claims…”
“But won’t they simply take O’Brian off the case claiming conflict of interest?”
“Nope, that’s the beauty part; O’Brian pretended to buy his wife’s bullshit about winning a free vacation. As far as anyone except me and a couple of good friends know, O’Brian doesn’t know a thing about his wife’s misadventures.”
“Okay, that’s great–no criminal charges; but if I hurt somebody like you say, won’t he be pressing civil charges?”
“Civil charges my ass! Look at this. After me and that wife of yours talked with him he was glad to drop all charges. By the way, that little lady is a real keeper–you ever decide to get rid of her let me know.”
I looked over at Pat, who was sitting in a corner looking like she was going to fall apart any minute. “I don’t understand,” I said to Boone. “Let me in on what happened.”
“Me and Pat there had a long talk with Jamison. He was a bit touchy at first, making noises about suing you for everything you had–until Pat explained you really thought he was raping her and if he insisted on pushing the point she’d have to explain how even though they might have fooled around before…Oh shit! I shouldn’t have said that, should I?”
I heard a quick intake of breath as Pat leaped up out of her chair and covered the couple feet between us faster than I thought possible.
“I’m so sorry, Honey.” The tears were draining down her cheeks when she planted kiss after kiss on my forehead. “Please forgive me, please, please.”
With that, she left me alone in the room with Boone. “Look man, I’m sorry,” tried to apologize once more, “but it can’t be a surprise to you about her and Jamison. I’ll tell you one thing though, that’s a hella’ve woman you have there. Man! You should have seen the way she crawled Jamison’s ass…” He studied the ceiling intently, obviously weighing his next words. “Anyway during the time you were in a coma, that little woman put the fear of God into Mr. Jamison. Seems the money in that family came from Mrs. Jamison’s folks and if she gets wind of what he did, she’d kick his ass out without a cent. Between your wife, your lawyer, and with me and the DA slipping a remark or two into the conversation, Mr. Jamison has agreed to pay all your medical bills resulting from this problem AND to never bring it up again.” With that, he left me to consider my next steps.
Now I may have been in a coma, but I’m not stupid. Putting all the little clues, I managed to pick up, together I had a pretty good idea about what must have happened between Pat and ‘Good ole Harry Boy’.
For the next two days I had nothing but time to think. Pat called for a few minutes twice a day and we made small talk, but she didn’t bring up the ‘elephant in the room’ except to promise we’d have a long talk when she brought me home and she’d abide exactly by my decision, no matter what it might be.