by D. L. Wood
* * * * *
“Your guy needs to plead this out." District Attorney Linden stood in a quiet corner of the large courthouse lobby, gauging Holt’s reaction. Her arms were full of brown case files, with Sims’s file, one of the thicker ones, balanced on top.
“Come on, Annabelle. You know I’m not pleading out. You haven’t even been to the grand jury yet.”
“Just a professional heads up. Thought I could save you some time. I know you’re doing this thing pro bono.”
“Really? You know that?”
Annabelle smiled. “Word on the street. Anyway, I just felt like you should maybe get out in front of this thing before we expend too much effort prosecuting.”
“Talk to me after the grand jury.”
“It doesn’t get better, Holt.” She pulled a smaller file from the bottom of her pile and handed it to him. “Go on. Take a look.”
His eyes narrowed, then he set his briefcase down on the floor and pulled the folder open.
“Read the reports. The hiking boots we found? Not only did they match the tracks at the murder scene, but we found particles of dried, red-tinted concrete stuck in the treads. It just so happens that the night before the bombing, someone accidentally walked right through some newly poured, dark red-tinted concrete that was part of the flooring on the first level. Was going to be part of some sort of atrium or something. The workers finished pouring it right before punching out that night. Nobody else was on the property after that. Or at least they weren’t supposed to be. The employees showed up the next day and found their newly poured floor tracked through. Ruined. They figured it was some kids just in there messing around, but after the explosion happened later that night, they felt it might be connected. They had repoured it before we could take impressions, but they were right. The particles are a match, Holt. Your guy’s guilty of arson and murder. You should plead while we’re in the mood.”
Holt heaved a sigh. “Talk to me after the grand jury.”
“Fine,” she said, shrugging as if he was squandering an opportunity, “but before you decide,” she paused, pulling a final sheet of paper from her stack and handing it to him, “you may want to ask your client about this.”
* * * * *
“You blew up a bulldozer?” Holt bellowed as he slammed his briefcase down on the table separating him from Sims. Whatever method Holt had used to rein in his emotions in the courtroom, he was not employing it now.
Sims looked surprised, but not surprised enough. “They found out about that? It was, like, thirty years ago. And those records were sealed.”
“Yeah, Kurt. They found out about that. Of course, they found out about that. They’re the police. That’s what they do. They would have learned about the sealed file in the course of handling the assault charge Donner pressed against you. But that wasn’t a felony, so they wouldn’t have taken a look at the sealed juvenile charges. But in a felony investigation like this, they can look at the sealed records. What I can’t figure out is why my client didn’t tell me about it first.”
Chloe watched the exchange from where she stood behind Holt, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed in front of her.
“Why would I bring that ancient history up?” Sims whined. “I was a kid. It was a demonstration stunt gone wrong. Nobody got hurt. I was trying to blow the tracks off the thing to slow down the demolition of a Civil War-era house. They were building a strip mall in Charleston for Pete’s sake. The explosion just ended up being a little bigger than I thought it would be. Took out a couple of cars parked beside it. It was no big deal.”
“No big deal?”
“Yeah, it got pled down to a misdemeanor. My dad knew the prosecutor. I got probation and some community service.”
“And a record. Which popped up when they ran your name.”
“So what? What does this have to do with Donner’s murder?”
“Because you’re not just being charged with Donner’s murder, Kurt. Didn’t you hear the D.A. in there? You’re now being charged with arson over the construction site explosion.”
“Yeah, I heard her,” Kurt hissed, his frustration level rising to match Holt’s. “It’s a complete farce. I wouldn’t even know how to do something like that.”
“So I hear.” Holt’s eyes glittered black. “Did you really tell the officers at your house during the search that you wouldn’t even know how to blow something up if you wanted to?”
Sims’s eyes flitted down, casting around for a memory. “You mean when they were talking to me before you got there?”
Holt nodded laboriously.
“They were talking garbage, giving me a hard time, asking me if they were gonna ‘find anything’ in the house and whether I just wanted to confess to the murder so I could save them time. I told them to shove it and they said, ‘well, what about the explosion at Donner’s project? How about that?’ and I yelled at them, said I wouldn’t know how to blow anything up even if I wanted to. So what?”
“So, you do know how to blow stuff up, Kurt. Have blown stuff up. The bulldozer is Exhibit ‘A’.”
“They can’t use that in this…can they?”
“Yeah, Kurt they can. Because now that you’ve misrepresented yourself, if you take the stand, they can introduce evidence of the bulldozer incident to show that you lied to the police and that you’re not trustworthy. So the jury gets to hear that you’re a liar and that you have a history of blowing stuff up when you’re not happy about it.”
“That’s not right!”
“That’s why I, as your lawyer, advised you to keep your mouth shut before I got to your house. You should have listened.”
“What if I don’t testify?”
“But what if we need you to testify, Kurt? Now we’re gonna get hit with this if we put you on the stand. Then again, it may not even matter. It’s possible they can get the conviction in even if you don’t testify, on the grounds that it proves you possess the skills and knowledge necessary for such a stunt.”
“But…but we don’t even know whether it was the same kind of bomb! I mean I basically used a souped-up version of a Molotov cocktail on the bulldozer. That wasn’t, couldn’t have been, what was used at Donner’s site. It wouldn’t have been strong enough.”
“Maybe, maybe not. We won’t know more till we get the case materials from the D.A. Either way, it severely complicates things and, at a minimum, limits our options.”
“Holt, I’m telling you, I didn’t do it. Not the murder, not the bomb. I’m innocent.”
Holt looked away, scratching his jaw. “See, Kurt, here’s the thing. Your prelim on the arson is set for next Monday, but I doubt they’ll present anything more than they’ve told me today. And frankly, they won’t need to. Remember the ‘unknown red particles’ they took from your house? Well, it’s known now. It turned out to be dried clods of recently poured, red-tinted concrete from the site near where the bomb was placed. It matches exactly. They found it in the treads of your hiking boots, Kurt. And on your closet floor. Like you tried to scrape it off, but didn’t quite get it all.” Holt paused to rub a hand over his mouth. “Back when all this started, right after the explosion, somebody said there was talk of ‘concrete evidence’ in the case. I didn’t realize they meant that literally. And now they’ve matched it to you. ‘We’ve got him red-handed—or at least ‘red-footed,’ the D.A. just told me, Kurt. She’s so convinced that you’re as good as convicted that she’s making jokes.”
A dull panic was making its way into Kurt’s features. “Hold on. I didn’t scrape anything off anything, man. I didn’t step in any concrete because I wasn’t at the site.”
“It’s not all they have, Kurt,” Holt said, and proceeded to outline the rest of what the D.A. had shared with him.
“But I didn’t make that call to him right before he got killed!”
“What about the other calls? The messages with the threats?”
“They weren’t threats! It was just posturing. You know, like vague
…comments…about how hard it was gonna be for him. Just trying to annoy him into walking away.”
“And they’ll claim that when that didn’t work, you decided to take more serious action. Like with the bulldozer. Are you sure that the 10:30 call wasn’t you harassing him again, with another ‘comment’?” Holt asked, using air quotes.
“No!” Kurt blurted, standing to pace while wringing his hands. Then his face contorted in deeper worry as he seemed to reconsider his stance. “I don’t know. Maybe. I’ve been drinking a lot lately. Maybe I called and forgot—”
“Oh, Kurt, come on.”
“No, seriously! But I didn’t mean anything by the calls. Not really.”
“Come on, Kurt. That’s not going to help at all. Besides, we’ll likely never get to explain that to the jury because if we try, the first thing they’ll hear is how you aren’t trustworthy vis-à-vis the blowing up the bulldozer lie.”
Kurt plopped into the chair, sagging forward, leaning his head on the table.
“I’m done for.”
Holt turned to look at Chloe. His expression said that he didn’t disagree.
FORTY-TWO
“I don’t believe him,” Holt scoffed as he and Chloe walked down the courthouse steps, the late afternoon light falling over the street and through the remaining bright yellow leaves still clinging to the trees spaced along the sidewalk. A pleasantly cool breeze tickled the skin as a couple walking their Goldendoodle passed by. The curly giant loped several feet ahead of his parents, tugging on his leash energetically.
“This is going to be a black hole,” Holt groused. “And I doubt we’ll ever get paid. At least not enough to make it worthwhile.”
“But what if he’s innocent?” Chloe replied.
Holt turned to Chloe as they stepped off the last step onto the sidewalk. “I know,” he said, his shoulders dropping in surrender. “I know.”
“Mr. Adams?”
The voice came from behind them. They both turned to see a young woman following them down the courthouse steps. “You’re Mr. Adams?”
“Yes,” said Holt.
The woman tucked a stray, wavy hair from her short blonde bob behind one ear and rocked nervously from side to side on her wedge boots. “Your secretary said you’d be in court. She said you weren’t expected back in the office today and…well…this couldn’t wait.” She eyed Chloe questioningly.
Holt noticed the nervous glance. “This is an associate of mine,” he said, twisting a hand towards Chloe. “She helps out in our office.”
“Oh. Well, okay. I guess that’s okay.” She bit her lip. “That murder case? The one about, um, that Donner guy on the news? I saw your name in the article online. It said you were representing him—the guy they arrested?”
Holt nodded.
“Um, yeah. Well. I think I may know something.” She anxiously cocked a hip and leaned on the strap of the Michael Kors handbag hanging from her shoulder as if hoping it would hold her up.
“What do you mean, ‘you might know something?’”
She squinted at him, and exhaled slowly. It looked like she was still trying to decide whether to actually share whatever it was that brought her there. Finally she gave in. “I mean, like, something important. You know…something that maybe proves he didn’t do it.”
FORTY-THREE
The air conditioner whirred in the background as Holt leaned forward on his mahogany desk, elbows propped on the leather blotter. The woman from the courthouse steps, who had finally introduced herself as Amanda Parvel, sat across from him in one of two navy and gray tweed wingback chairs. Chloe sat in the other. Bookshelves flanked either side of the office door, home to rows of old editions of the Tennessee Code Annotated and Shepard’s Citations. An engraved plaque from the local bar association acknowledging some achievement adorned the same shelf as a glass-encased baseball with a signature Chloe couldn’t make out. Diplomas and certificates of admission to the bars of multiple courts hung in heavy gold frames on the wall behind the desk.
After several minutes of urging, they had finally convinced Ms. Parvel to come back to Holt’s office with them. Even then, she had sat in her car for about five minutes before finally coming inside. Now she sipped the bottle of water Karen had brought her, clutching it like it was her only friend in the world.
“Better?” Holt asked.
She nodded. “Yes, sorry. It’s just…I’m a bit nervous.”
“I understand,” Holt sympathized. “Why not just start at the beginning?”
“Okay,” Amanda said, shifting in her chair again. The late twenty-something was having a hard time with whatever it was that had prompted her to seek Holt out. Chloe perched on the edge of her chair, willing the woman to get to the point. She knew they couldn’t push too hard—they might spook her—but if she had information that could help Kurt Sims, maybe it would also shed light on the identity of the person threatening her family.
“So, I’m a…well, it doesn’t matter,” she qualified, before continuing, clearly filtering her comments as she spoke. “I’ve lived here a couple of years—came from Birmingham after graduation. Anyway, about four months ago I met this guy and we started dating. He was a little older than me, but he was good to me and fun, so the age difference didn’t seem to matter.”
Holt nodded, pressing her on.
She sniffed. “So, the night of that fire—the one at the construction site at Five Points?”
Chloe and Holt both nodded eagerly.
“Well, the next day, he and I were having lunch at Nero’s Grille and—you know they have those flat screens on the wall—anyway, the news does a quick, little report on the explosion and when it’s over, he says, ‘Guess what goes around comes around.’ I asked him what he meant and he just said, ‘Never mind.’ But then a couple of days later, the guy that owned the site, Phillip Donner, was found murdered. And that night, we were just hanging out, grilling, watching the game, you know. But I guess he had one too many, and whenever that happens he gets really, really chatty. He was going on and on about the SEC East, so just to change the topic I asked him if he had heard about the murder, and he started talking again about how Donner got what he deserved. Only this time, when I asked him what he meant, he said an ex-girlfriend of his had had some trouble with Donner. When I asked him what kind of trouble, he said that Donner had threatened to cause problems for her unless she went along with some scheme of Donner’s.”
“Who’s the ex-girlfriend?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. He wouldn’t say. But then he goes, ‘Wouldn’t put it past them.’ Which didn’t make any sense, right?”
“Sure,” Chloe agreed.
“So I said, ‘Put what past who?’ And he said, ‘Ending it once and for all.’ So then I asked him, ‘Ending what?’ But then he just shrugged me off and changed the subject.”
“Did you ask him about it later?” Holt prompted.
Amanda nodded. “But he wasn’t having it. A couple of days later I came in—he was already annoyed that I had been at a showing all day so it was probably bad timing—but I asked him about what he meant, and he told me to drop it. It ticked me off that he wouldn’t explain himself, so I pressed him. In hindsight, I should have just left it alone. Timing, you know? We were both exhausted from long days, and the whole thing turned into a fight until we were just yelling at each other. Then he threw a glass against the wall and I left.”
Holt squinted disapprovingly. “Is he normally violent?”
“No, but after seeing that side of him, I broke up with him. I don’t have time for that.”
“You’re gonna need to tell me who he is,” Holt pressed.
Amanda bit her rose-painted bottom lip. “I don’t know if I should say.”
“Amanda, this information only helps us if we get his name. You had to know we would need it. Otherwise, why tell us this at all?” Holt asked.
“Amanda,” Chloe interjected, offering a soft smile, “I know this must be hard, but, if you
can help us, please do. You came here because you thought there might be something to this. If you’re right, it could keep an innocent man from going to prison. Don’t you want that?”
Amanda blinked. She looked like she might cry. “Of course, I do. It’s just…I don’t want to make trouble for him. I mean, I don’t want to date him, but that doesn’t mean I want to get him mixed up in the middle of something. It’s why I came to you instead of the police. If you check this out, and find out that there’s nothing to it, if it’s not going to clear your client, then you can just forget about it, right? You don’t have to give anyone his name.”
“Look,” Holt assured her, “if there’s really nothing to this, then, maybe we can just forget you ever came here. But I won’t know until I check it out.”
She rubbed her pant leg and fidgeted. “No,” she said urgently, shaking her head. “This was a bad idea. I shouldn’t have come.”
“Amanda—”
“No, I mean it,” she snapped, slinging her purse onto her shoulder and jerking out of her chair in one forceful movement. “This was a mistake. I have to go.”
She strode past Chloe and through Holt’s door, headed for the lobby.
“Amanda, please,” Holt called, following after her as the electronic beep signaling the opening of the office’s front door sounded. When he reached it, she was already halfway to her car. Holt stepped outside, calling out to her. “Amanda, if you change your mind, you know where I am.” She stopped in her tracks, one hand on her open driver’s door, still facing away from him. She didn’t turn as he continued, “Please give it some thought, okay? A man’s life may be on the line.”
In answer, she climbed inside her royal blue Prius, slammed the door shut, and drove away.
* * * * *
Holt walked back into the office to find Chloe leaning back into her chair, looking very disappointed.
“So now what?” she asked.
“Well,” Holt started, then his eyes widened in alarm. “Oh man,” he exclaimed, then ran to the lobby and ripped open the front door. Chloe followed him, watching as he disappeared onto the front porch. She looked at Karen who shrugged, apparently as lost as Chloe. She was about to follow him out when he reappeared in the doorway, looking grim. “I forgot to get her license plate.”
