Contempt: A Legal Thriller

by Michael Cordell

  “What was your connection with Lauren? And how’d you know what she told me? She assured me that neither our client nor our firm had done anything to rig the bidding process.”

  “That’s because she helped rig it. She was in on it. She requested a wide range of records from the city, saying she was working on a case, one of which was the Hexagon bid. She forwarded the information on to us, and we were able to use it to tailor our bid and ensure that Wilson-Scott would win.”

  “Then why did she tell me she had concerns?”

  “Because she was a greedy little bitch,” Joseph muttered. “Once you started asking questions, she decided she wanted a bigger cut. She said she told you she had suspicions of internal tampering in case I didn’t give her a bigger cut. She’d be able to bring the whole thing down on our heads, and if I said she was involved from the beginning, she could have you testify that she talked to you. And who would doubt the word of an Assistant DA? If she’d just taken the money we’d agreed on, none of this would have happened.”

  “Right. It was her fault,” Thane said.

  “So Gruber called you and said he was her assistant and set up the meeting. And after she was unconscious, I used her phone and sent you those texts. I thought the ‘hope you won’t be angry’ line was a stroke of genius. We knew the restaurant was closed, and it made sense you’d wait on that bench. Then it was just a matter of waiting until you found the body.”

  A police siren filled the night air, soft at first, then progressively louder. Joseph slid over to the window, keeping an eye on Thane, and glanced outside. A police car sped down the street, continuing past the office building on its way to something less important. He walked back over and stood behind the chair.

  “But why’d you need me to take the fall, Joseph?”

  “Because if an Assistant DA is murdered, the cops aren’t going to rest until they get their guy. They’d have traced it back to me eventually. I needed to keep the police from looking any further, so I gave them a slam-dunk case.”

  “You offered me my job back to keep an eye on me.”

  “And to make it up to you. There was absolutely no reason why we couldn’t just start over.” Joseph glanced at the gun in his hand, then looked at Thane with remorse. “But, of course, you just couldn’t let it go. I’m sorry. I wish there was another way. If only McCoy had killed you when he went after you outside the courthouse. That would have been better for everybody.”

  “No, he wasn’t going to hurt me. That whole thing was orchestrated. He needed to keep acting like I killed his daughter.”

  “Orchestrated? Yeah, right. I’ll have to be sure to ask him about that,” Joseph said as he raised his pistol and pointed it at Thane’s chest.

  “Ask him now.”

  Joseph looked puzzled at first, but his confusion evaporated when the distinct sound of a cartridge being loaded into the chamber of a gun echoed through the room.

  “Put the gun down,” McCoy instructed.

  The only movement in the room was the beads of sweat worming their way down Joseph’s face, all the color draining from his skin. For a minute his eyes flicked around the room, his mind racing, considering every option.

  Then he laid the gun on the desk.

  Thane picked it up and moved it out of Joseph’s reach. His former boss looked at him, staring at him as though he were a puzzle with half the pieces gone.

  “When Mr. McCoy confronted me in the parking lot that night outside Hannah’s apartment, he said I better tell him who to hate,” Thane said. “So I did. I told him about Gruber and the ether.”

  Joseph looked at him in disbelief. “You set this whole thing up.”

  Thane nodded solemnly. It wasn’t something he was proud of, but if anything, a man like Joseph would understand. “Gruber never would have been convicted,” Thane said, “especially after Lenny was found dead. Tell me who you think made that happen? Had to be Gruber tying up loose ends. And I knew McCoy here demanded justice. Besides, I got the death penalty for his daughter’s murder, so apparently that was a just sentence. So no, I didn’t try stopping him, if that’s what you mean.”

  “I mean—you told him to limp. How to break into the house. And to make the call to your client’s workplace.”

  McCoy stepped to the side of Joseph, his gun still trained on his target. “A small price to pay for the name of Lauren’s killer,” he said. “And he was the killer. Or at least, the one who carried it out. We had a talk about it before I sent him to hell.”

  Joseph glanced at McCoy, but quickly refocused his attention on Thane. “You put Stone in a position where he’d have to clear his own name. You called that publisher, not Gruber. And the computer disks, those were yours.”

  “I made Stone feel absolutely positive he had the right man, whether it was the stolen items outside Skunk’s apartment or the phone call to where he worked. I talked enough with Skunk in prison to know his M.O. And yeah, I broke into Gruber’s house one afternoon and made those calls. Once Stone started boasting to the press, I put him in a damn tough situation—but when I left a message at his office about Mr. Song, I didn’t make Stone pressure him out of testifying. And I sure as hell didn’t make him alter the evidence. He had a second chance to do the right thing. If he’d have turned over the real security tape, that would have been that. But I had no doubt that once again he would find a way to justify sending an innocent man to jail. He deserves everything he’s going to get.”

  “But you . . . You set up your own client. You let him be arrested.”

  Thane’s face betrayed a flicker of pain—the first emotion he’d shown the entire conversation. “That was the hardest part for me, but I also gave him the perfect alibi. I knew about the bank security camera; that’s why I had him meet me there for a ‘job.’ I paid a guy a few bucks to handle the bench seats to make sure Skunk sat on the right bench, and then I had the slats moved the next morning so the police would think he sat on the other side of the park, but I always had that chip available to me. I’m sorry he had to go through this, but I’m sure he’s more than happy with how things turned out. He would have ended up back in jail before the month was up. Now he’s going to have enough money to live life like it’s supposed to be lived.

  Joseph looked at Thane as though he had just met him for the first time. “Thane, this isn’t you.”

  Thane grabbed his sports coat from the back of his chair and threw it over his shoulder. “Maybe not before. But in Forsman, a friend of mine taught me that if somebody hits you in the leg with a stick, you bash them over the head with a pipe. You take the whole head. You and Gruber took five years of my life. You were going to let them kill me, and in fact, I’m convinced that if that couple hadn’t walked by the alley that night, Gruber was planning to kill me right there; it wouldn’t have been hard for him to say it was self-defense. Now, I might be biased, but as far as I’m concerned, justice is being served a hell of a lot better now than the first time around.”

  He handed Joseph’s pistol to McCoy, who slipped it in the waistband of his pants. Joseph reached his hand out like there was a chance in hell Thane might accept it, but he simply stepped around it.

  “So what happens now?” Joseph asked. “You going to call the police?” his voice cracked in a pleading tone that even he had to have known was wasted.

  Thane started toward the office door. “This isn’t my fight anymore. You destroyed my life, but you took this man’s only daughter. It’s his call now.” He opened the door and walked out of his office. Joseph called out to him.

  “Thane, wait. Where are you going?”

  “Home.”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-THREE

  Thane sat in his car, looking up at his office window, which was still illuminated. He didn’t know exactly what would happen up there—whether McCoy had questions he wanted answered first, or if killing Joseph was
all the closure he needed—but Thane was certain he wouldn’t be seeing his former friend again. He leaned back in his seat, knowing he should drive away, but he didn’t feel he had the strength to even lift his arm and turn the key.

  He was surprised to not feel strong emotions one way or the other: neither remorse over what was about to happen to the man who gave him his start, nor satisfaction at having secured some fractured sense of justice. Instead he felt nothing. He simply drew a deep breath as though he had just finished a hard day at the office.

  From the moment Thane first broke into Gruber’s house one afternoon to call Stone’s office and the publisher—the first of three such break-ins conducted to establish a phone record—he thought he would struggle with what he had done.

  When he told Hannah a few days earlier that he knew he didn’t have the right to be responsible for whether somebody lived or died, she naturally assumed he meant representing Skunk, but he meant it more literally. Because of him, two people were going to die, and others would have their reputations destroyed.

  And yet, despite knowing on an intellectual level that he didn’t have that right, he only noticed that it felt much more like justice than vengeance. He wondered what that said about him, not detecting even a quiver of moral dilemma over what he was doing. And that was what troubled him the most.

  Throughout this entire ordeal, the only concern that dominated his mind was whether or not he could be the husband Hannah deserved. If the part of him she fell in love with had died in Forsman, was it fair to stay with her? He had just orchestrated the death of another human being, playing the part of judge and jury and delegating the role of executioner to McCoy. He allowed an innocent man to be charged with the crime and manipulated the subsequent hearing to take it where he wanted it to go. He pulled all the strings. Yet he, a man who at one time had great respect for the rule of law and an even greater belief in the sanctity of life, felt absolutely no remorse.

  But once the trial was over and he was holding Hannah in his arms outside the courtroom, he felt the darkness ascend from his body like a demon being exorcised from a possessed soul. There was hope for redemption, and that’s what wanted most. He believed everything was going to be all right, and while he recognized time might prove him wrong, he was confident he could live with what he had done. It wasn’t right, but he knew that sometimes justice took curious turns along the way—if such a thing as justice even existed.

  He finally started his car and pulled away from the curb.

  The lease to his office wasn’t really up for another couple of weeks, but when he saw Joseph at the courthouse, he figured the thought of him being alone in his office would be too tempting of an opportunity for his former boss to pass up. McCoy was more than willing to chance the possibility of a wasted evening sitting in the empty office across the hall.

  He really had intended to not renew his office lease for another month, but sitting there waiting for Joseph, he had time to think about what he wanted to do next. He was serious when he told Gideon he had no interest in the city’s money, which would most certainly be his for the asking in a civil trial: he hadn’t wanted to make money off this for himself. But the more he thought about it, he realized that an enormous settlement with the city would allow him to practice the type of law that otherwise wouldn’t be financially feasible.

  He would have the luxury of taking on clients who were at risk of being falsely imprisoned by the system, or innocent people who were already on death row. Clients who couldn’t afford anyone but a court-appointed attorney who would already be too overworked to help them. He could try to prevent what happened to him from destroying other lives, and he believed his training in law and his experience at Forsman gave him a unique set of skills to fight for those individuals. And as a bonus, he could hire Gideon to stay on and work with him. Not only would he enjoy having his company, but it would also increase his friend’s odds of staying out of prison, especially now that Thane would be able to pay him a very respectable wage.

  All of this, of course, was contingent on what Hannah had to say. He thought she would understand, given everything that just happened, but if she wanted him to do something else, then that’s what he would do. It was now her turn, and everything from here on out would be for her.

  Thane called out for Hannah as he entered their apartment, but got no response. She wasn’t in the living room, and when he went back to look in the bedroom, it was dark. He was on his way to check the kitchen when he heard her calling to him from the fire escape outside their window. He looked and saw that she had spread a blanket on the black metal platform, a bottle of wine and two glasses awaiting his arrival.

  “Been out here long?” he asked.

  “Just a few minutes. I figured you’d be home soon. Come join me.”

  He crawled out the window and sat behind her. Someone had shot out the streetlight at the end of the alley, which helped make the night feel at least a little darker.

  “I thought maybe we’d spend the evening looking at the night sky,” she said. She handed him a glass of wine and reclined, nestling against him, her back resting upon his chest. They sat like that for several minutes, her warmth filling him with each breath they shared. There was nothing else he needed.

  Hannah tilted her head back and pressed it against his shoulder, looking up at him with her warm eyes. “I was so proud of you today.”

  Thane put the glass of wine down, kissed her forehead, then wrapped his arms around her waist, holding her even closer. He shook his head almost imperceptibly. “Don’t be proud,” he said as he stroked her hair. “Just be glad it’s over.”

  They continued sitting together in silence, staring up toward the sky. Thane could make out the faint flickering light from a few stars. He noticed the small points of light, but also the infinite darkness surrounding each star. He felt as though he was looking into his own soul. He focused on the stars: the more he stared at them, the further the light seemed to travel into the dark sky. It gave him a sense of hope.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to my family for their encouragement. My mother Harlene (who should always be thanked first, for many reasons), Tom, Nanci, and Jim, who all provided me with feedback upon reading an early draft. And to my friends Karen, John, and Stacy for being my supportive tribe for oh so many (many) years.

  Thanks to other friends who, for whatever crazy reason, willingly served as early readers and who offered helpful words and constructive observations along the way: Bill Archambault, Tom and Chee Payne, Donna Spearman, Karen Howe, Susan Kristensen, Connie Koslow, Faye Satterly, Mathew Bowen, Don Davis, Megan Holley, and Jeff Graup.

  A special shout-out to Anne McAneny, who went extraordinarily above and beyond by providing invaluable feedback, insights, editing, guidance, assistance, encouragement, and support in so many ways (and is thus deserving of her own paragraph). She is also a fine author in her own right.

  And the gold medal of thanks and appreciation goes to my wife, Kate, for everything she does, and for everything she means to me.

  About the Author

  Michael Cordell is a novelist, playwright, and produced screenwriter. He has sold three screenplays to Hollywood, including Beeper, an action-thriller starring Harvey Keitel and Joey Lauren Adams. Michael currently lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he has taught screenwriting for over fifteen years.

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