Unsympathetic Victims: A Legal Thriller (Ashley Montgomery Book 1)

by Laura Snider

That was the first time she suspected that her father could be guilty.

  “Katie,” George shouted.

  Katie’s mind came out of her thoughts and back to reality. The setting sun ricocheted off the snow and into her eyes. Her jaw dropped once her eyes adjusted to the light. The courthouse square was chaos. In the time that she’d been inside the Public Defender’s Office, the mob had realized that they far outnumbered law enforcement. They were fighting back, trying to make their way toward the Public Defender’s Office.

  A line of officers had formed a barrier, but they were slowly inching backward, toward Katie and Tom. Multiple spent taser shells lay in the street. Some unlucky members of the crowd had been on the receiving end, but the shocks hadn’t been enough to deter the advancing mob.

  Shit. Shit. Shit, Katie thought. Her eyes shifted down the chain of officers, her heart beating rapidly. She counted all five, then began studying faces. Her shoulders tensed, then relaxed when she saw that all officers were unharmed.

  “Do you have a gun?” Katie asked Tom. She was shocked at how calm her voice sounded. All while her mind screamed to run, run, run!

  “Are you kidding me? No. Jailers don’t carry guns.”

  “Get inside.” She nodded toward Ashley’s office. “Hopefully, someone in there has one. If there is a back entrance, try to get the attorneys to go out that way. Find a car and get out of here. Do you understand me?”

  “What about you?”

  Katie swallowed hard. This was bigger than Ashley Montgomery. Katie’s coworkers, her brothers, were in trouble. She would fight side-by-side with them. “Don’t worry about me.”

  Katie didn’t wait for him to respond. She knew he’d follow her directives. Without a weapon, it was unsafe for him. That was an undeniable fact. It wasn’t safe for any of them, but at least she could defend herself. She unholstered her service pistol and sprinted to join the line of officers, stepping in between George and a rookie cop named John Jackie.

  Officer Jackie turned to Katie. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. The guy seemed to lose his words when he was around Katie. He was a year or two older than her, but he’d had no law enforcement experience before he was hired by the Brine Police Department. He’d worked at the jail for several years, but as Tom had made abundantly clear, containing criminals was a wholly distinct and separate job than policing.

  “Nice of you to join us, princess,” George said. A bead of sweat trickled down the side of his face as he kept his gun trained on the mob.

  Katie snorted. “I was following orders, remember? And don’t call me princess.”

  The courthouse loomed over them, its shadow stretching and elongating with the advance of the sun. The building was silent and serene, as always. Katie had always loved the courthouse with its marble-filled hallways, high ceilings, crown molding, and intricate detailing. But it had grown ominous in the last few hours.

  The crowd inched forward. Katie scanned their faces. She knew most of them, recognized their facial features but not their expressions. She had trouble catching the eye of anyone, and when she did, there was something missing. An emptiness, like they were not acting of their own volition. As though the mob was an entity that made decisions, controlling its individuals. Each person was a grain of sand lost in the immensity of the beach.

  George grunted. “Forgive me if I wait until this is over before I apologize.”

  Katie eyed the advancing crowd. They were growing bolder by the second. The line of officers would not be able to stand their ground for long. “Do you have a game plan here?”

  “Holding out for reinforcements.”

  Someone threw a beer bottle from somewhere near the front of the crowd. It careened toward the line of officers, toppling end over end. Katie could see it in perfect detail, like a robbery victim might fixate on their assailant’s weapon. A light brown bottle with a blue Bud Light label. It soared just above George’s head and shattered against the exterior wall of the Public Defender’s Office.

  “Jesus!” Katie shouted. “We’re running out of time. How long is it going to take for reinforcements to get here? Did they stop at Genie’s Diner for coffee or something?”

  Katie could see Genie’s Diner from where she stood. It was on the courthouse square, two blocks to the north of the protest. The lights blazed inside, and she could see Genie through the window, bustling around, flitting from one table to the next. It was only two blocks away, but it felt like an entirely different planet. Oh, how she longed to be in there.

  Just north of Genie’s Diner was Mikey’s Tavern. Where Arnold Von Reich had died less than twenty-four hours earlier. If the officers failed to control the crowd, Ashley’s body might be the next to land on the cold steel of the medical examiner’s table.

  The crowd surged forward, and the line of officers took another step back.

  It didn’t look good. One or two more steps back and they’d be pressed up against the peeling exterior paint of the Public Defender’s Office. She cursed Ashley for putting them in this position. Katie didn’t want to fire her gun. These people were her neighbors. Normally, they were kind, caring people. They’d just been pushed to their limit.

  “Back up!” George shouted. There was a note of hysteria in his voice. “We will shoot!”

  Another beer bottle sailed through the air. This one with a red Bud Heavy label. It came straight toward the line of officers. George ducked, but Officer Jackie wasn’t looking in that direction.

  “Rookie!” Katie shouted, but it was too late. The bottle struck him in the head, and he dropped.

  “Shit!” Katie wanted to bend down and check on the rookie, but she had to keep an eye on the advancing crowd. The two instincts warred inside her head. Her eyes darted toward Officer Jackie, then back to the mob. “Officer Jackie!” she shouted, nudging him with her toe. He didn’t respond.

  “Is he okay?” Chief Carmichael shouted from the other side of George. He, too, looked torn between helping one of his officers and keeping the others safe.

  Then there was the unmistakable sound of an engine roaring to life. A black SUV came screeching around the corner. It drove along the line of officers, between them and the angry mob. The driver wore a black hooded sweatshirt. Katie couldn’t see any passengers until they were turning the corner away from the courthouse square. A face appeared in the back window. Ashley Montgomery. She winked and blew Katie a kiss before ducking back down.

  Nobody other than Katie seemed to have noticed that Ashley Montgomery had fled the scene.

  “That bitch,” Katie growled.

  “You kiss your mother with that mouth?” George said.

  “We’re covering for her, and Ashley doesn’t give a shit.” Katie breathed slowly to calm her nerves. Her breath came out as puffs in the cold air, like smoke from a dragon’s maw. The snow had stopped, but the air around them was growing colder, dropping from the high to the low twenties. “I mean, Jesus Christ, John Jackie is knocked out cold.”

  “Hold that thought. We can deal with it later.”

  “Right,” Katie said, turning her full attention back toward the mob.

  The sound of wailing sirens filled the air. Some members of the mob started to look around as though breaking free from a trance.

  “Lookie here,” George said as row after row of lighted vehicles came screeching to a halt around the courthouse square. “Reinforcements have arrived.” The vehicles were marked “Sheriff’s Department,” “Iowa State Patrol,” and with the insignia of police officers from nearby towns.

  Peace officers poured out of the vehicles. Someone shouted, “Disperse now!” over and over again into a loudspeaker. The mob scattered, dropping their signs and running in every direction. Officer Jackie woke up, but he was disoriented. An ambulance took him to a nearby hospital to treat him for minor wounds. They arrested ten people, none of which were Erica Elsberry.

  Katie watched in silence as the heavy iron door to the jail slammed behind the la
st of the arrestees. The courthouse courtyard was in full darkness now, as it always was by early evening in December.

  “Tough day,” Chief Carmichael said.

  Katie jumped and spun to look at him. The chief had premature lines in his forehead and cheeks. Stress. He gazed at her through intense green eyes that seemed to see straight into her soul.

  “Yeah. It was.” She looked around at the mess littering the courthouse lawn, illuminated by pockets of light cast by streetlamps. Broken signs lay facedown in the snow. Beer bottles shattered along the pavement. A bloody Kleenex danced in the wind.

  “It looks like we fought a war here.”

  “In a way, we did,” Chief Carmichael said.

  They were both silent for a long moment.

  “How’s Officer Jackie?” Katie finally asked.

  “A minor concussion. Nothing major. He’ll be back to work tomorrow.”

  Katie’s shoulders relaxed. She hadn’t realized how worried she had been about him until now. “Poor kid.”

  Chief Carmichael chuckled. “Kid? He’s older than you are. You know,” he said, patting Katie on the shoulder. “I think he’d really enjoy a visit from you.”

  “Why me?”

  “Come on, Katie,” Chief Carmichael said with a wink. “You know why.”

  Katie didn’t like the sound of that. She had no interest in dating coworkers, let alone Officer Jackie. There was something about him that rubbed her the wrong way, but she could never quite put her finger on what it was.

  “I don’t want you to come into the office tomorrow,” Chief Carmichael said.

  Katie startled. It was a big switch in topics. “What? Why? Did I do something wrong?”

  The chief shook his head. “I am reassigning you. Your job now is to keep Ashley Montgomery safe.”

  “What? No!” Katie could have screamed. She couldn’t imagine a single worse assignment.

  The chief sighed. “Things got out of hand today. We can’t have another murder. Especially not an attorney. It would be all over the news.” He ran a hand over his face. “We are going to have a tough enough time keeping today’s disaster quiet.”

  “I know, but me?” She jabbed a finger at her chest.

  “Yes, Katie. You.”

  “I can’t possibly be the best person for this job.”

  “You’re perfect for it.”

  “Think about it, Chief. I hate her. I would rather assault her than protect her.”

  “That’s not true.”

  Katie scoffed. “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because, Katie. Look at your actions today.” He gestured around them. “When push came to shove, you made the right choice. You have an excellent moral compass. You will uphold the law. That’s who you are. That is why you are the perfect candidate for this assignment.”

  Katie sighed. He wasn’t wrong. She hadn’t even considered letting the mob get to Ashley. “How long?”

  “Until the threat to Ashley is over.”

  “What about the Von Reich investigation? I can’t do that and be Ashley’s bodyguard.”

  “I’m sorry, Katie. This isn’t meant to be a punishment. You are the only female officer. You can go places that male officers cannot.”

  Katie crossed her arms. Panic fluttered in her chest. She was going to redeem herself from the Petrovsky search warrant fiasco with the Von Reich investigation. Now that opportunity was slipping through her fingers. “You think someone is going to attack Ashley in the bathroom?”

  “Possibly.”

  “So, I lose the Von Reich investigation?”

  “No. George is your partner in that case.”

  “And how does that help?”

  Chief Carmichael patted Katie on the shoulder again. Somehow it didn’t come across as patronizing. “You will get to boss him around.”

  That was a change. George had ten years’ seniority on her. “Let me get this straight. I will stay on the Von Reich investigation.”

  “Yes.” A smile began to tug at the corner of Chief Carmichael’s lips.

  “And George would have to do all of the legwork.”

  “Bingo.”

  Katie chuckled. “Okay. I can live with that.”

  “I knew you’d come around.” There was a short pause, then Chief Carmichael said, “Speak of the devil.”

  George sidled up next to him. “This is a mess,” he said as he considered the courthouse lawn.

  “I was just telling Katie here about the new arrangement for the Von Reich investigation.”

  “That I’m her bitch,” George said matter-of-factly.

  “Exactly.”

  “Speaking of Von Reich. I had some time to go through jail phone calls and videos before this disaster struck,” George said, motioning toward a sign.

  The sign was broken in half, reading only Get. It didn’t mean anything without the out, but those two words together, they spelled potential disaster for Ashley. And, thanks to Katie’s new assignment, Katie as well.

  “What did you find out?” Katie asked.

  “The jail video footage from December ninth is missing. I’ve got the jail administrator looking into it. But Petrovsky made one call to Mikey Money on December ninth at 1100 hours. They were cryptic with the content of the conversation, but it sounded like Petrovsky was buying drugs. The only significant part of the conversation was the time and place of pickup. Midnight on December eleventh behind Mikey’s Tavern.”

  Katie mulled over the details. The meeting was set for the day after Von Reich’s murder, but it was the same location and matched Von Reich’s time of death. “If Mikey is the murderer, he could be setting Petrovsky up to be his next victim.”

  George cocked his head. “That’s not where I was going with this, but I guess it’s possible.”

  “Where were you going with it?”

  “I was talking about Mikey’s late-night drug business.”

  Law enforcement had long suspected that Mikey had a side hustle, but they had never been able to catch him in the act.

  “Okay,” Katie said, unconvinced.

  “It explains why the cameras shut off at eleven thirty p.m. He’s too smart to get caught dealing, and he knows we could use a county attorney subpoena to get the footage.”

  “Or he likes to kill people at that time.”

  “Come on, Katie,” Chief Carmichael said with a chuckle. “We all know Mikey. We’ve known him a long time. He made some bad choices in his youth, but he’s a decent guy now.”

  Katie considered felony drug dealing as something a bit more serious than a “bad choice,” but she wasn’t one to contradict her supervisor.

  “Nice work, George,” Chief Carmichael said. “But see if you can verify the midnight drug angle. Maybe someone killed Von Reich to take his drugs.”

  Katie bristled. George was already getting all the recognition for the Von Reich case. “There’s one problem with that scenario,” Katie said. “Von Reich was a drinker, not an addict.”

  George shrugged. “Maybe he dabbled.”

  Katie had to fight the urge to roll her eyes. George was going to solve this crime and get all the glory. She’d remain the idiot that screwed up the Petrovsky search warrant, and he’d be the hero. To add insult to injury, she was stuck following a psychopath defense attorney around town.

  For all Katie knew, Ashley was the killer. Now there’s a silver lining, Katie thought. If Ashley was the murderer, then Katie’s reassignment might not be such a bad thing. She had no other way to legally track Ashley’s movements. But if she was there with Ashley’s consent, well, that was a different story.

  10

  Katie

  December 10th – 5:30 p.m.

  Katie followed Chief Carmichael into the County Attorney’s Office. They were there to meet with Elizabeth, to get her blessing on Katie’s new assignment. It wasn’t a requirement, since Elizabeth wasn’t technically Chief Carmichael’s boss, but Elizabeth liked to be kept in the loop, and it was important to
maintain a good relationship with the prosecutor.

  “Hello, Violet,” Chief Carmichael said, smiling at the receptionist.

  Violet was young, not a day older than twenty, with wide brown eyes. “Hello, Chief Carmichael. And Officer Mickey, right?”

  Katie nodded.

  “You are here to see Ms. Clement?” Violet fiddled with the sleeve of her blouse.

  “Yes. Can you let her know that we’re here?” Chief Carmichael asked.

  Violet picked up the phone and pressed a button. Katie could hear several rings, then nothing. Violet hung up, then tried again. This time a voice came through, loud and strong.

  “What do you want, Violet?” Katie recognized Elizabeth’s sharp tone.

  “I, umm—”

  “Spit it out. I’m on the other line with my campaign manager.”

  “Chief Carmichael is here to see you.”

  “Are you kidding me, Violet? You interrupted my call to tell me that. You couldn’t bring a note in to me or something?”

  “I—”

  “Honestly. Do you even realize that it is an election year? Do you understand that I have a very real competitor and if I am voted out of office, you will lose your job, too? Do you want that?” She paused, then continued. “Well? Do you?”

  “No, ma’am, I mean—”

  “Never mind. I don’t have time for this nonsense. Tell Chief Carmichael I’ll be with him in a moment.” The phone clicked, indicating Elizabeth had hung up.

  Violet slowly lowered the phone from her ear, placing it on the cradle. She stared at it for a long moment, then looked up. Tears were welling in her eyes. “She will be right with you. She’s just finishing up a phone call. You can have a seat if you’d like.” She motioned toward a small waiting area.

  A stark white couch and matching chair filled the waiting area. Chief Carmichael chose the chair, and Katie sat on the couch. They were silent as they waited, and Katie couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d overheard Elizabeth say. She wondered if Elizabeth was truly worried that she’d lose the election. Katie hadn’t known that she had a challenger for her job.