Contempt: A Legal Thriller

by Michael Cordell

  The sound of the reporters’ pens started scratching fast.

  “Yes, we did see that. But I didn’t feel that that’s relevant.”

  “I’m sure you don’t, Detective,” Thane cut him off with a wave of his hand as he walked over to the jury box, facing them but still addressing Struthers. “So the DA calls and tells you who you should consider in your investigation, and when you look into it you find that this professional thief, a man who in all likelihood has only been caught a small fraction of the times he’s broken the law, called his work from the home he was allegedly robbing? I’m not here to claim that my client is an honest man. His track record has shown otherwise. But I think history will also show he’s not a stupid man.”

  Thane turned back around so that he was once again facing Struthers. “Detective, I can see why you say it was easy. In fact, in my opinion, it was suspiciously easy.”

  Stone once again stood. “Your Honor, is there a question in any of this?”

  Before the judge could answer, Thane started walking back to his chair. “I think a lot of people here have a question, but it’s not one the witness can answer. Nothing further, Your Honor.”

  As Thane retook his seat, Kristin leaned over. “What was all that about?”

  “A start. But if it’s going to work, I’m going to need you to focus your energy on figuring out what’s on that missing disk. Or at the very least, find out what’s on the other ones.”

  The next witness called was Roy Vale, a thirty-something factory supervisor who looked pissed he had to waste a weekend in court.

  “Mr. Vale, you’re the night supervisor at the B&D Factory, correct?” Stone asked.

  “Yeah, that’s right. Which means I should be asleep right now.”

  “Well, I appreciate your losing a little bit of sleep to assist in a murder trial. And the defendant, Scotty Burns, works for you?”

  “He did. We had him cleaning up the floor during the night shift. Sweeping, cleaning up spills, that sort of shit. Ah, stuff.”

  Stone handed the witness a piece of paper. “This is a copy of a telephone log listing calls made from the victim’s home the night of the murder. Do you recognize the highlighted number?”

  Vale held the paper out in front of him, and after squinting like someone caught under a spotlight, he nodded and handed the page back to Stone.

  “Yeah, that’s my work number.”

  “And did you get a call from Mr. Burns that evening?”

  “Yeah, he said he was sick or something and wasn’t coming to work.”

  Stone turned away, looking satisfied. “No further questions, your Honor.”

  Thane rose, but remained standing behind his table. “Mr. Vale, how well do you know the defendant? Have you spent much time with him?”

  “It’s a factory, not a social club. I got work to do.” Vale offered up a slight sneer, but Thane stared him down until he finally shifted his weight in the witness box and shook his head. “No, I don’t spend time with him. I don’t know nothing about him, except he’s another of those parole losers we get sometimes.”

  “So if you don’t know Mr. Burns very well, how did you recognize his voice?” Vale considered this but did not answer, so Thane continued. “If I were to play you a recording of five or six different people saying they were Scotty Burns, do you think you would be able to pick out my client’s voice?”

  “Lookit, the guy called and said he was Burns. You asking me did I recognize his voice? No. I’m just telling you what the guy said.”

  “Well, District Attorney Stone also said this was a slam-dunk case. Obviously, you can’t always believe what someone says.”

  Stone sprung from his chair, but before he could sputter out any words, Thane raised his hand toward the judge. “I apologize, Your Honor. No further questions.”

  The last witness for the day on the side of the prosecution was a heavyset man in his early sixties named Willy Woolf. A bus driver for thirty years, the clothes on his back looked like things he’d owned for at least that long. The tip of his unfashionably thick green tie was frayed, but he was in court and obviously wanted to show the proper respect.

  Woolf fidgeted in the witness box, trying to settle his bulk in the tiny chair. Stone asked him a few basic questions—his name, his age, his occupation—obviously trying to set the man at ease. But it only took a couple of minutes before the underarms of his shirt had soaked through to his sports coat. The DA’s tone was unusually soothing, but Woolf looked as though he would rather be stuck in rush hour traffic with a bus full of screaming children.

  Stone walked Woolf through his story, up until the point where Skunk was on the man’s bus. “And it’s your testimony, Mr. Woolf, that the defendant got off your bus at 17th and A Street around 8:30 the night of the murder?”

  “Yes, sir,” the witness said, then turned and leaned toward the microphone. “Yes, sir, that is correct.”

  “A stop only half a mile from the victim’s home, only an hour from the time of the murder. No further questions.”

  Woolf emitted a booming sigh of relief, relaxing for the first time since reaching the stand. He started pulling himself up from the witness chair, but Judge Reynolds raised his hand.

  “Not quite yet, Mr. Woolf. I tend to prefer giving both sides a chance to ask questions. I’m funny like that.”

  Woolf looked at the judge, flushed from embarrassment. Nodding, he sheepishly settled back down into his seat, taking out a handkerchief and dabbing his forehead before round two began.

  Thane looked at his notepad for a moment, then turned his attention to the witness. “Mr. Woolf, how many people do you carry each evening on your bus?”

  Woolf shifted in his seat, but managed to maintain eye contact with Thane. “Depends on the day, I suppose.”

  “How about on a Friday. Just give me an estimate. Would you say it’s rare to have fewer than five hundred riders on a Friday?”

  As the court waited for an answer, Thane saw Stone lightly nudge Winston, who smiled and nodded.

  “Oh yeah,” Woolf said, “definitely more than that. I got people coming on and off my bus all day long. Oh yeah, sure, more than that.”

  “And yet you can say with certainty that my client was on your bus the night in question. I must say I’m impressed.”

  Woolf beamed, relaxing under the compliment. “Thank you.”

  Judge Reynolds rapped his gavel to quiet the chuckling that rippled around the gallery, although he himself couldn’t suppress a smile on his face. Thane pursued his point again.

  “Can you please tell the court how you are able to say with certainty that Mr. Burns was on your bus on the night in question, given the number of riders you see each day?”

  Woolf nodded, his smile dropping away, replaced with a look of concentration. “There weren’t many people on the bus at the time. He was a talkative little feller—kind of twitchy, but seemed nice enough—so I asked him if he lived in the area and he said yeah, he lived around there, then he said he was going home but first he said he was going to a bar near there before walking on home. That’s what he said.”

  “And you remember that?”

  “Yeah, because there ain’t no bars around there. I’ve lived in that neighborhood most my adult life, so I should know. So that sort of made me wonder what he was up to, not like it was a big deal or nothing, but that’s how I remember him.”

  More than a few heads in the jury box whipped down, writing rapturously in their notebooks. Ferguson looked over at Thane and grinned, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. Hushed murmuring came from the spectators.

  Thane froze for a moment. He glanced back over at Kristin, but all she could do was return his look. Finally he turned back toward Woolf. “And you’re sure that was the twenty-eighth of July? Almost five months ago?”

  “Yes, sir, because the
next day I read about the murder and Mr. Gruber’s address. I thought wouldn’t it be something if that guy on my bus had done it, because he’d lied about the bar, and he had a limp. Paper said the guy who done it was limping. Course I didn’t really believe he’d done it, otherwise I’d have called the police. After I saw his picture in the paper, though, I felt real stupid I hadn’t told anybody about it, but you gotta believe me that at the time I didn’t figure I was right. I sure remember thinking it, though.”

  Thane tried to speak, knowing the jury would pick up on his discomfort. He twice started to ask a follow-up question, but stopped himself before getting past the first syllable of the first word. He looked one more time at his notepad and finally faced the fact he had nowhere to go except back to his chair.

  “Mr. Banning, are you through?” the judge asked.

  Thane nodded and sat down. Kristin tried to meet his eyes, but Thane didn’t return her look, frustrated enough with himself as he was. So Kristin waited a respectable thirty seconds before leaning over and whispering:

  “Let me know if you want to bounce questions off me for the upcoming witnesses. Before you do anything else that stupid.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY

  Hours after the last witness stepped down from the stand, Gideon lumbered into a run-down Korean grocery store right before closing time. He had spent the last hour canvassing the stores that faced the park where Skunk claimed to have sat for hours the night of the murder. The neighborhood saw more than its share of violence on a regular basis, and store owners took note when Gideon walked through their door: he didn’t just look like someone with a potential for violence; he looked like a man who carried it with him wherever he went.

  After the trial’s first day had wrapped, everyone working for the defense knew they had to come up with something to clear Skunk, which was why Gideon was stomping from store to store, having so far been met with indifference at best. But he was willing to see it through, because given Thane’s disastrous performance in the courtroom, Gideon knew it would take a hell of a lot of luck to get someone like Skunk kicked free. It’s not as though he felt some sort of obligation to help out Skunk––caring what happened to other people wasn’t exactly his strong suit––he just didn’t enjoy feeling like Thane’s charity case.

  This store was the ninth he had visited. He walked toward the front counter of the five-aisle grocery store where Mr. Song, the Korean storeowner who looked old enough to have nine or ten grandkids, was bent over slightly, feeling for something on the lower shelf.

  Gideon shook his head. “You don’t need your gun,” he said. “I just want to ask you something.”

  Gideon held up a picture of Skunk, but it took a moment before Song was willing to take his coke-bottle glasses off the intimidating visitor to look at the photo. When he finally did, it wasn’t long before he snapped his attention back to Gideon.

  “Don’t know him,” Song said.

  “Well, at least pretend to look carefully. Lookit, I’m not here to rob you. Just look at the damn picture.”

  Song huffed but did not reply.

  “I’m trying to help somebody,” Gideon said. “He says he was across the street in the park the night that detective got murdered. I just want to know if you remember seeing him. I know people around here don’t like to get involved in nothing, but I’m trying to find someone who believes in doing the right thing. Don’t need to say it was that night, ‘cause it was a while ago, but does he look familiar?”

  Song grudgingly took the picture from Gideon and studied it some more, scrunching his nose up as he handed it back.

  “He stopped in my store one time, tried to steal a bottle of beer. Not just little bottle; one of a thirty-two ouncers. Told him get the hell out of my store. He then go sit in the park rest of night.”

  Gideon’s eyebrows shot up. “You sure? When was that?”

  “You said I didn’t need to say what night,” Song complained, but Gideon glared at him. “I don’t remember. Many months ago maybe. I don’t know.”

  Gideon held out his hand in appreciation, but the storeowner just stared at it. Gideon pulled it back and shoved it in his pocket. “Thank you. Somebody a whole lot nicer than me will probably be by to talk to you more about this.”

  He looked around and grabbed a couple of packs of gum off a shelf next to the cash register, pulling three bucks out of his front pocket and slapping them down. “You’re a good man, even if you ain’t very friendly.”

  Gideon walked out of the store and pumped his fist. He dug deep in his front pocket for some change, then looked up and down the street. He ended up walking fifteen blocks before finally coming across a payphone. He stuffed two quarters into the slot, then dialed and got the answering machine at Thane’s office.

  “Where the fuck all the payphones go while I was away?” Gideon asked. “Christ. Maybe you oughta get me one of them little phones. Anyway, I found somebody who remembers seeing Skunk. Korean dude works in a grocery store right across the park from where Skunk said he hung out. You need to talk to him. Name of the store is uh, Song Yi Convenience Goods.” Gideon started hanging up, then brought the phone back up. “And I want a raise.”

  He hung up, chuckling to himself. This called for a beer. Maybe two. Thane never mentioned an expense account, but he figured he’d earned it.

  Stone returned to his desk following a seven o’clock meeting with his staff that morning. He had been at the office since five, about an hour earlier than normal. Working twelve-hour days was not unusual for him, and that was only the time spent in his office. As DA, even going out to dinner with his wife was always work-related: a city event, a government function, a banquet honoring the latest name on the latest plaque. But he knew what he’d signed up for, and he wouldn’t be running for re-election if he couldn’t handle the life. And while the thought of running for higher office had crossed his mind more than once, he never wanted to be one of those Hollywood DAs that used the office as a ladder-rung to bigger, better things. This was where he could do the most good for the most people.

  This was where he was meant to be.

  He stood behind his desk looking through the list of calls taken by his secretary when Winston knocked on the open office door.

  “You ready to review the security guard’s testimony?” Winston asked.

  Stone waved him in. “How’s Sheri doing?” he asked, not looking up from the list of phone numbers.

  “There are good days and bad days. I’ll tell you what, you wouldn’t believe how much her medical care runs. Without insurance, we’d be out on the street. Seriously. It’s staggering, the cost of . . .” Winston trailed off, realizing his boss wasn’t listening.

  Stone looked closer at one of the telephone messages he was holding, making sure he had read it correctly. He thought for a moment, then jabbed at the intercom button. “Jeannie, have my car brought around. Now.”

  Winston walked over to Stone’s desk. “What’s up?”

  Stone handed him the slip of paper. “This came in during this morning’s meeting.”

  Winston read the note then looked up, concerned. “Want me to talk to him?”

  “No, I’ll do it. Something like this, I want him to understand we’re not fucking around. He better make damn sure what he’s saying.” Stone grabbed his jacket and headed toward the door.

  “Think there’s any way it’s true?”

  “No. It’s just a nuisance, but if I don’t do it now, it’ll turn into a headache later.” Stone put on his suit coat and headed out his office. Chances were fifty-fifty this storeowner was either looking for publicity or didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. As Stone walked down the hall, he couldn’t remember if his secretary had written the name of the person calling in the tip.

  Thane watched Gideon strut into his office without a scowl for the first time since working
this case. He didn’t look excited—not exactly—but he met both his and Kristin’s eyes as he strode in, which was a first. Even his black T-shirt was tucked in, albeit only in the front.

  Thane leaned back in his desk chair but didn’t say anything, his hands knit behind his head. Kristin sat mute on the sofa, slouched against one of the cushions, looking exhausted. Gideon nodded at her, then sat down across from Thane.

  “You get my message?” Gideon asked.

  “Yeah, I did.”

  Gideon waited for a moment, but when Thane didn’t say more, his smile started to fade. “I kind of thought you’d be happy. Like a ‘thank you’ or somethin’. Like maybe I was actually earning my keep around here. Ain’t you ever heard of positive reinforcements?”

  Thane sat up in his chair, looking beaten down. “I appreciate the effort, really I do. But Mr. Song says now he’s not sure he saw Skunk at all.”

  Gideon slammed his hands on the desk. “I’ll get him to remember.” His eyes were wild, like a boxer who’d just weathered a body blow and wanted to return the favor.

  Thane waved him off. “Forget it. He won’t testify. You did a great job, but it’s not going to happen.”

  “What the hell happened?”

  “I have my suspicions.”

  Kristin pulled herself off the sofa. “Stone?”

  Thane nodded.

  “But how?” she asked. “Gideon just called last night.”

  Thane leaned back and stared up at the ceiling. “Now that’s something I don’t understand.”

  “Damn, this day’s starting to suck,” Gideon said.

  “If you think it’s bad now,” Thane said, “wait until you hear who’s been added to this morning’s witness list, after the neighborhood security guard testifies.”

  “Another fucking bus driver?” Gideon asked.

  “Yoder,” Thane said. “And knowing that asshole guard, he’ll do anything he can to finish us off.”