Accomplice Liability

by Stephen Penner

  Jackson grinned again. “Now, you’re getting it.” He stepped in close to Brunelle. “Maybe if you wore a badge and a gun instead of a suit and a tie, maybe then you’d understand what it’s really like to try to protect people from scumbags like Elmer Hernandez. Maybe if you worked against the other side instead of sleeping with them, I could have some respect for what you do. But the bottom line is, I didn’t shoot anyone. I didn’t tell anyone to shoot anyone. Wilkins chose to tell Hernandez and Hernandez chose to kill Derrick. And if Sammy Keller gets washed away with the tide too, so be it. I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.”

  Brunelle took a moment to root himself to the ground and slow his breathing. He wanted to be calm for this.

  “So,” he confirmed, “if there are no witnesses, it’s like it never happened?”

  Jackson spread out his arms and smiled broadly. “Now you get it.”

  “No. You do.” And Brunelle punched him square in the nose.

  Jackson tripped backward over the weight bench, landing ass-first and cracking his head on the thin mat covering the floor.

  Brunelle turned to Chen even as he shook the sting out of his fist. “No witnesses, right?”

  Chen looked at Jackson, still prone and grabbing the back of his head. “I didn’t see anything.”

  EPILOGUE

  Brunelle dismissed the cases against Samantha Keller and Lindsey Fuller. If he couldn’t charge Jackson—and he couldn’t, there were too many intervening actors making independent decisions—he could hardly send those two off to prison. As for Hernandez and Wilkins, the jury took less than an hour to convict them both.

  As for Jackson, he wasn’t charged with murder, but he was suspended pending an internal affairs investigation. Apparently, outing your snitch to a murderous drug dealer is conduct unbecoming a police officer. Maybe. The union was contesting the suspension. And it was with pay anyway. Brunelle figured it was 50-50 he’d keep his job.

  That left the small issue with Gwen. He liked her well enough, but the thought of dating someone inside the office was just too much. It was stressful enough having exes in the medical examiner’s office and the local defense bar. He didn’t need to worry about running into Gwen at the office after they broke up. Because, of course, eventually, they would break up.

  Besides, he hadn’t completely screwed up his relationship with the cops yet. There was probably some female detective at Seattle P.D. or the King County Sheriff who’d be willing to date him for a few months before a drama-filled breakup

  On the other hand, she’d have a gun…

  So it was Brunelle who had invited Carlisle out to dinner. He took her to The Pond, the Vietnamese restaurant Robyn had introduced him to. Ostensibly, it was to celebrate their victory. But it was also to let her down easy.

  It turned out to be even easier than he’d hoped.

  “You thought I wanted to date you?” She asked once she’d stopped laughing. “Dave, you idiot. I’m a lesbian.”

  Brunelle’s jaw dropped. “Gay?” Could he really have been so wrong? Did he really misread all those signals? “But, but you’re divorced.”

  As if he could prove she was wrong or something.

  “Yes, Dave,” Gwen replied with another bemused laugh. “Gay people can get married now. That means we can get divorced too. Why? Do you have a problem with that?”

  “What? Oh my God, no,” he was quick to defend, hands raised. “No, no problem at all. I think it’s great.”

  “You think it’s great I got divorced?” Gwen teased.

  Brunelle didn’t get it, not at first. “What? No, I just... I mean...” He trailed off. After a moment, he asked, “So, Chris?”

  “Short for Christine,” Gwen explained. “We were dating when gay marriage was made legal. We sort of got caught up in the moment and just decided to get married too. It was a mistake. We were trying to save something beyond saving. It didn’t take us long to figure it out. The divorce was amicable. I mean, it sucked, but that’s life sometimes, right?”

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “That’s life sometimes.”

  He thought for several more seconds. “So that’s why you said Robyn was gorgeous,” he tried.

  “I said it because it’s true,” Carlisle replied. Then she laughed. “And yeah, I’d totally hit that.”

  Brunelle’s embarrassment at being so dense was joined uncomfortably by jealousy at Carlisle being revealed as a potential rival rather than confidante. He didn’t fully understand. So he decided to just shut up about it. “Well, I’m glad we had this little talk.”

  Gwen laughed too. “Me too.”

  They finished dinner and Gwen picked up the check. To pay him back for mentoring me through my first murder trial, she’d said.

  When it was time to go, Brunelle decided to linger and have one more drink. Even Vietnamese restaurants have whiskey in the back. Gwen thanked him again for the opportunity, and wished him a good night. The waitress brought his drink, and he took a sip as he glanced around the restaurant.

  He’d picked the place because Robyn had taken him there. Not because he remembered the decor was classy and the food was excellent, although both of those were still true. He’d picked it because he hoped if Robyn used to come there a lot, she might still come there. And he would run into her.

  She would walk up to his table when he wasn’t looking and say something like, ‘Hiya, Mr. B.’

  He’d look up at her and smile, then say something like, “Well, hello there, Miss D.’

  She’d sit down and they’d talk about the case they’d just finished. She’d thank him for dismissing the case. He’d shrug and say it was the right thing to do.

  Eventually there’d be a pause and then she’d say, ‘I miss you, Dave.’

  He’d say, ‘I miss you too.’

  She’d say, ‘I know it’ll be hard to make it work, what with you being a prosecutor and me being a defense attorney, but it’s not impossible. As long as we don’t have any cases against each other, we can make it work. Let’s give it another try.’

  And he’d say, ‘I’d like that.’

  But she wasn’t there.

  And she wasn’t coming.

  He was there, sipping his whiskey, and ending his day the way he always ended his day.

  The way Burner Hernandez should have murdered Derrick Shanborn.

  Alone.

  END

  The following is a preview of

  A LACK OF

  MOTIVE

  David Brunelle Legal Thriller #8

  Chapter 1

  Every garden has its serpents.

  Homicide D.A. David Brunelle frowned as he took Exit 9 from eastbound I-90 and turned north onto Bellevue Way.

  Bellevue.

  Brunelle remembered old T.V. shows set in New York where the cops would take the crazy people to ‘Bellevue’—the mental hospital in that great metropolis. But on the other side of the continent, in the lesser metropolis of Seattle, Bellevue was an asylum of a different sort. It was the crown jewel of ‘The Eastside,’ the string of suburbs on the east shore of Lake Washington, separated by that body of water from Seattle proper, connected only by two floating bridges, one of which Brunelle had just finished crossing. Once a sleepy vacation village, Bellevue had grown into a city in its own right, with a skyline of a half dozen 40-story office towers, a nationally ranked school system, and the highest average home price in the state. If you could make it there—well, you’d made it. It was known for money and mansions, not murder.

  But, Brunelle considered again as he approached the glass and steel downtown, gardens and serpents

  He crossed under the streetlights at Main Street, his tires splashing through the black puddles left over from the day’s rain, and looked for the entrance to the parking garage under the latest mixed-use, retail-and-condominium high-rise. It wasn’t hard to spot. At one in morning the streets were deserted, but the patrol car parked at the entrance of the subterranean garage, its emergency lights flashi
ng blue and red, made sure Brunelle didn’t miss his turn. He waved to the uniformed officer standing guard next to his vehicle and descended into the cement labyrinth beneath the city.

  Brunelle vaguely remembered reading a Greek myth in high school about a Minotaur at the center of a labyrinth, but he couldn’t recall if the maze had been empty prior to the hero’s arrival at his destination. Still, he was pretty sure the hero hadn’t been waved down four levels of parking by uniformed police officers with flashlights. Brunelle repeated his ‘thank you’ wave to each officer as he passed, circling the garage in silence, as if the weight of the earth above prevented any sound from disturbing the dignity of the tomb the garage had, at least temporarily, become.

  The center of the maze finally came into view when he reached level P4. But there was no Minotaur. Unless the Minotaur had been shot in the head while sitting in the driver’s seat of a black Audi A4.

  Brunelle parked his own, far more modest domestic sedan a few parking spots away from the yellow crime scene tape cordoning off the Audi from the rest of the garage. Then he stepped out and looked around for someone to introduce himself to.

  He was looking for the lead detective, but he’d learned the hard way over the years not to just assume it was the 50-something white guy in a trench coat. Especially since that guy was holding the clipboard with the major incident log, the sign-in sheet for everyone who entered or exited the crime scene. Not exactly a Top Dog assignment. But one that could prove useful to Brunelle nonetheless. As he signed himself in—‘D. Brunelle, King Co Pros Ofc’—he scanned the entries above his.

  He nodded thanks to the clipboard holder, then ducked under the crime scene tape and called out, “Detective Emory?” The entry for ‘Det. C. Emory, BPD’ had been at the very top of the log.

  His decision not to stereotype the lead detective appeared even smarter as the 30-something African American woman inspecting the windshield of the Audi looked up at him. “I’m Emory.”

  The follow-up question, ‘Who are you?’ was left implied.

  Brunelle was used to being recognized as a prosecutor. During the day he wore a suit, and any more in Seattle the only people who wore suits were attorneys. Even the bankers were sporting khakis and open-collar shirts. But he’d been called out of bed—his turn as the on-call homicide prosecutor—and rather than show up in jeans and a college sweatshirt to meet up with some Seattle P.D. detective he’d known for years, Brunelle was wearing the same jeans and purple ‘W’ sweatshirt to contact cops he’d never met before.

  He did homicides. And Bellevue didn’t do homicides.

  “I’m Dave Brunelle.” He extended his hand to Det. Emory. “King County Prosecutor’s Office.”

  Emory visibly relaxed. He wasn’t just some kook, or a reporter, or both. She shook his hand warmly. “Casey,” she offered her first name. She was tall, with a medium complexion, loose black curls that fell to her shoulders, and dazzling green eyes. “Nice to meet you, Dave.”

  Brunelle nodded toward the crime scene behind her. “So, you’re one of the homicide detectives?” he inquired.

  Emory shrugged, following his gaze. “Not exactly. I’m in violent crimes. We don’t have a specific homicide unit. This kind of stuff doesn’t happen in Bellevue.”

  “Right,” Brunelle accepted the explanation without comment.

  “What about you?” Emory continued the icebreaker. “Do you do other violent crimes?”

  Brunelle shook his head. “No. Just homicides.”

  “Sounds uplifting,” Emory joked.

  Brunelle smiled weakly. “It has its moments.” He pointed to the Audi. “So what do we have here?”

  Emory turned and led him to the center of the carnage—and even that was politely controlled to within just a few feet of the luxury automobile parked beneath the high-end shops and million-dollar condominiums. The Minotaur looked less menacing with his arm hanging out the open car door and parts of his brain stuck to the inside of the windshield.

  “What do you think?” Emory asked him as Brunelle surveyed the scene.

  “I think,” he replied after a moment, “he’s dead.”

  Emory cocked her head. “Really? Wow. I’m so glad you came.”

  “Happy to help,” Brunelle grinned to her, but then returned to his appraisal of the victim. “He was seated when he was shot from behind,” he observed aloud. “There’s one bullet impact on the windshield, but…” He craned his neck to look at the back of the victim’s head—or what was left of it—laying on his right shoulder. “There’s a lot of blood and it’s dark in here. I can’t quite tell if there was more than one shot.”

  “There were two shots,” came a voice from behind them.

  Brunelle stood up straight to see the speaker. He was a frail-looking older man, with a shock of white hair and a skeletal frame not at all hidden under a light blue windbreaker.

  “Dr. Kaladi,” Brunelle knew. He was one of the assistant medical examiners Brunelle had met over the years. “They still sending you out on these?”

  Kaladi shrugged and offered a strong smile of large, yellow teeth. “I’m not dead yet,” he chuckled at his own joke. Medical examiner humor. “And I live on the Eastside. Redmond, home of Microsoft, Nintendo, and the Kaladi family. Besides, I don’t sleep much any more at my age, so I might as well be useful.”

  Brunelle acknowledged the explanation with a nod. “So, two shots?” Back to business.

  “Yep.” Kaladi stepped around Brunelle to the body and gingerly tipped the victim’s head forward. He pointed at the base of the man’s skull, “Here,” then higher up, dead center, so to speak, “and here.”

  When Brunelle didn’t say anything, Kaladi added, “It’s hard to see with the blood and stippling, but I was able to put my finger in each of them. There are definitely two entrance wounds.”

  Brunelle looked again at the windshield. “Only one exit wound, though?”

  “Correct,” Kaladi confirmed. “It looks like the lower shot exited just below his nose, taking some teeth with it. The higher shot likely couldn’t exit the skull and ricocheted through the poor man’s brain until it came to rest inside. Pretty typical, actually. But I’ll confirm at the autopsy.”

  Brunelle glanced again at the windshield then back at the victim and, more so, the position of the driver’s seat. “The neck shot was first, I think. Trajectory makes sense.”

  Kaladi nodded. “Agreed. The second shot likely occurred after he slumped forward. Harder to determine because there’s no secondary bullet impact, but I might be able to tell from the angle of the beveling of the skull.” He pointed again at the bullet wound obscured by the blood and matted hair on the back of the man’s skull. “But look at that burning of the flesh. It was a contact wound. Whoever did this came up from behind and executed this man. He never had a chance.”

  “Wow,” Emory finally jumped into the conversation. “I’m glad you two are here.”

  Brunelle smiled. “Oh, me too. Nothing like a night with another nameless murder victim.”

  “Ah, see,” Emory smiled herself, raising a finger in the air. “Now that’s where local law enforcement has its value too. We may not have a lot of murders in Bellevue, but we still have plenty of crime. And our victim here was well-known to B.P.D. Jerry Jenkins. Drug addict, thief, vandal, and all-around irritant. We’ve all arrested him at least once for something. Shoplifting, trespassing, unlawful bus conduct.”

  Brunelle raised an eyebrow. “Unlawful bus conduct?”

  “It’s a misdemeanor to smoke at the transit center,” Emory explained.

  “It is?”

  Emory nodded. “Yep.”

  “That’s stupid,” Brunelle opined.

  “Probably,” Emory laughed. “But it lets us contact people at the transit center and check for warrants. Jerry always had a warrant or two out.” She looked at the victim, her expression softening a bit from its heretofore professional detachment. “But never for anything serious. He was a misdemeanor gu
y. Substance abuse and mild mental illness. But nothing violent. Nothing that would get him executed.”

  “And nothing that would get him in an Audi A4,” Brunelle guessed. “So maybe there was more to good ol’ Jerry than you knew.”

  Emory shrugged. “Maybe. But we get to know some of these guys pretty well. The car is likely stolen, so he could trade it for drugs maybe.”

  “You think it was a drug rip?” Brunelle posited.

  “Maybe,” Emory shrugged. “I just don’t know who else would walk up to Jerry and shoot him in the back of the head for no apparent reason.”

  Another sudden voice from behind them. “We have the shooter on video, Detective Emory,” called out one of the uniformed patrol officers, gesturing excitedly toward the other end of the garage. “The security guy finally got here and was able to pull it up.”

  “Who was it?” Emory asked. “Do we have an I.D.?”

  “Oh yeah,” the officer answered, wide-eyed. “You can see his face clear as day. And you’re not gonna freaking believe who it was.”

  END OF CHAPTER 1

  To read more, download A Lack of Motive now!

  THE DAVID BRUNELLE LEGAL THRILLERS

  Presumption of Innocence

  Tribal Court

  By Reason of Insanity

  A Prosecutor for the Defense

  Substantial Risk

  Corpus Delicti

  Accomplice Liability

  A Lack of Motive

  Missing Witness

  Diminished Capacity

  Short Stories starring David Brunelle

  Case Theory

  Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

  THE TALON WINTER LEGAL THRILLERS

  Winter’s Law

  Winter’s Chance

  Winter’s Reason

  ALSO BY STEPHEN PENNER

  Scottish Rite

  Blood Rite

  Last Rite

  The Godling Club