Carly had learned a number of valuable lessons from her childhood encounters with the Judge's cantankerous old mule. One was to never show fear. Another was to dig her bare toes into the clover, plant both fists on her hips, and stare her nemesis down.
Both lessons stood her in good stead now. Her chin snapped up. Her shoulders braced.
"Before we carry this discussion any further, Mr. McMann, there are three things you should know about me. One, I didn't call either my friends on the parole commission or the warden... although I have an idea who did," she added in a low, furious aside.
Parker, damn him. As disgusted with herself for discussing an on-going case at a cocktail party as with Parker for interfering in it, Carly made a mental note to deal with the assistant district attorney later. Right now, Ryan McMann demanded her full attention.
"Two, I don't play games with a murder investigation."
He stared down at her, his blue eyes cold and dangerous. "And three?"
"Three, I don't respond to denigrating epithets like 'lady' or 'doll face.' You can address me by my name, which is Samuels, Carly Samuels, or by my rank, which is major. Take your choice."
Chapter Four
Ryan couldn't remember the last time anyone had slapped a shot past the impenetrable shield he'd erected around himself since the day of his arrest.
For a moment, a crazy moment, he stood blade to blade with a woman who barely came up to his chin and felt the absurd urge to yield the ice to her. Hard on the heels of that impulse came the equally absurd and far more compelling urge to wrap an arm around her waist, haul her against his chest, and bury his face in the mass of wine-colored hair twisted up in a smooth coil.
The fight with Gator had started his blood pumping. The sight of the major with her chin at a touch-me-and-you're-dead angle stirred it even more. Heat shot through the lower half of his body, and disgust through the upper half.
Smart, McMann. Real smart. As if destroying three lives, his own included, with a single night of misplaced lust wasn't enough. One false step now, one ill-chosen word, and he'd wreak even more carnage.
That sobering reminder killed any wayward impulses, carnal or otherwise. The woman watching him with wary brown eyes seemed to take his silence as a signal that she'd scored a point. She lifted her chin another degree, then, to his surprise, offered a stiff apology.
"I didn't make the phone call that brought you here, Mr. McMann, but I'm afraid I may have said something to another attorney that caused him to do so. I'm sorry. I won't make that mistake again."
He stared at her for long moments, calling himself ten kinds of a fool for feeling even a fleeting impulse to believe her. He decided to ignore the apology.
"I'll take Carly."
"I beg your pardon?"
"You gave me a choice. I choose Carly. Titles like major... or warden... push the wrong buttons with me." He dragged out a chair. "Let's get this over with."
She didn't jump at the bone he seemed to be tossing her. Folding her arms across her light blue uniform shirt, she regarded him skeptically.
"Are you offering to give me a statement?"
"No, but you can run through that list of questions you wanted to throw at me yesterday."
"Will you answer them?"
"That depends on what they are."
"I see. Are these answers for the record?"
His smile had a bitter taste. "We both know nothing's ever off the record."
She cocked her head, studying him through thick lashes tipped at the ends with the same dark red as her hair.
"It sounds as though someone got hold of information you thought was given in confidence."
His answer was a careless shrug. He should have known she wouldn't give up. Not when there was still blood to draw.
"So who burned you, McMann? The prosecutor who argued the case against you? One of the witnesses? The reporters who tried you on the nightly news?"
"You're not even warm, Counselor."
He watched her make the leap. Her eyebrows slashed downward. That incredible, sensual mouth firmed to a tight line.
"Are you saying someone on your own defense team violated attorney-client privilege?"
"I'm not saying anything. Let's just get on with this interview."
She wanted to, badly. He could see the impatience in her face as she studied him a moment longer. Then she rooted around in the black leather purse lying on the conference table and dug out a cell phone.
"I'll have to see if I can reach the stenographer and get him back to the base. In the meantime, you may want to go to the men's room and take care of that cut on your lip. It's bleeding."
Ryan smeared the back of his hand across his mouth. It came away rusted with red.
"Down the hall and to your left," she instructed as he pushed out of his chair. "Just past the... Sergeant Hendricks? This is Major Samuels. Sorry to do this to you, but I need you back on base. Yes, now. For a witness statement. No, you don't need to bring the printer. We won't need it transcribed tonight, only recorded."
Ryan left her issuing instructions to the court reporter and wandered through the empty halls. The custodial worker who'd let him in and directed him to the major's temporary office nodded as he passed.
Helluva security system. Locked doors and alarms to protect computers and files after hours, but one tap on a glass door, a few words to a night janitor and anyone could get in. Even an ex-con with a bloodied lip.
What the hell. The building's security wasn't his problem. Palming the men's room door, he fumbled for the wall switch. The overhead fixtures flickered, then poured down a flood of harsh white light. The image in the mirror took on several different shades of ugly.
Christ! No wonder the major had shot to her feet when he'd appeared in the doorway. He saw her face again, her creamy skin grayed with fear for a heartbeat or two. There was a time, he remembered bitterly, when he hadn't inspired fear in women. A time when someone like Major Carly Samuels wouldn't freeze up at his sudden appearance. They'd come after him in hordes. The groupies. The overeager fans. The talk show hostesses and senators' wives who loved to round out their scintillating dinner parties with a millionaire jock who also happened to hold a masters in electrical engineering from UVM.
For the most part, the women had amused Ryan. Some of them had humbled him with their sincere devotion. Until his marriage had fallen apart, though, none of them had ever tempted him.
A shudder started at the base of his neck and rippled down his back. In that black corner of his mind he saw again the face that would always haunt him. Laughing, sexy, and far too knowing for her years. Her brown hair feathering her cheeks. Her pink tongue teasing her lips.
Then came the stark black-and-white photo taken after her death. Ryan gripped the sides of the sink. He'd live with the guilt for the rest of his life. The regret. The disgust that spewed and churned like sulfuric acid in his gut. He'd killed that girl as surely as if he'd handed her the fatal dose of coke she'd mainlined after she'd been pilloried by the press, painted as a whore by Ryan's defense attorneys, jeered at by the fans who lined the courthouse steps. He'd killed her, and he'd accepted that responsibility by changing his plea to guilty midway through his trial.
Now another woman was dead. Her picture had leaped out at Ryan from the papers. Beautiful in a sulky, sultry sort of way. A general's daughter. An air force officer. Wife of another officer. A social, active woman with an extensive network of friends on base and in the local community, all of whom expressed shock and dismay at her murder.
Had Ryan killed her, too? Had he contributed to her death by keeping silent? Was she a member of the club?
Sweat pooled at the base of his spine. With a vicious oath, he jerked the faucet, boated his hands, and shoveled cold water onto his face.
The major—Carly—was waiting for him when he returned to the conference room a short time later.
"The court reporter's on the way. Would you like some coffee while we wait? There
's a machine in the break room."
"No."
Ryan rolled out a chair. A small, prickly silence settled over the conference room. He let it stretch. So did Carly.
Her name suited her, Ryan thought, studying her through hooded eyes. It sounded soft on the ear, yet not sweet. She looked soft, too... on the surface. Subtle shadows deepened her eyes to chocolate brown. Her cinnamon hair showed glints of gold when she turned her head. Whispery little curls feathered the edge of her high cheekbones and teased
at the pearl studs in her ear. Her tailored uniform shirt hugged a nicely rounded set of curves. He gauged her age at mid-thirties and wondered briefly at the absence of a wedding ring before dismissing the question. Her marital status didn't concern him, only her profession.
She was a lawyer. Like all of her kind, she feasted on the flesh of human tragedy. And she was so damned good at pulling on the mantle of detachment lawyers liked to assume. Behind that mask of feminine softness, she revealed nothing of herself. Her cool, self-contained composure irritated Ryan no end.
"Are you related to the Congresswoman Samuels whose face I see on billboards all over town?" he asked abruptly, wanting to strip away some of the mask.
"She's my mother. She's up for re-election this year."
"How long has she been in Congress?"
Something close to a smile touched her face for a moment. "Three terms, although it feels longer. One member or another of my family's been involved in politics for as long as I can remember."
"Pretty convenient that the air force would assign you to your hometown," Ryan observed cynically.
"Yes, it is," she replied before turning the tables. "What about you? Why didn't the court remand you to a federal facility closer to your home in Vermont instead of sending you down here?"
"I didn't ask."
And didn't care. By the time the sentencing phase of his trial had rolled around, Ryan couldn't claim Vermont as his home any longer. His ex-wife had rushed the divorce through and sold the house in
Burlington overlooking Lake Champlain. His parents were dead. Ryan had only shrugged when the judge sent him South, as far away as possible from the legions of angry, protesting fans who'd mobbed the courthouse steps each day.
As far as possible from the ice.
He hadn't expected to miss the cold and ice so much. Sometimes he dreamed about the frigid air that sliced into his lungs like razor blades when he tramped through the woods behind the house. The dreams were so real he could almost smell the turpentine of the spruces, feel the snow dragging at his boots.
From the first moment he'd stepped off the bus almost three years ago, Alabama's torpid heat had clogged his lungs. The mugginess, the creeping kudzu vines with their cloying scent, and the love bugs that swarmed, joined, and smashed against car windshields in black streaks had made him feel at first as if he'd arrived in a foreign land. Gradually he'd acclimated. He'd even come to appreciate the beauty of the moss-draped live oaks and the azaleas that flamed with color in the spring. But he missed the cold. God, he missed the cold!
He was still thinking about the way the winter sun sheened the frozen lake in shades of blue and white when the stenographer arrived a few moments later.
Carly waited until the sergeant had set up the small computer with its specially modified keys for rapid transcribing, then gave the time and the date. Indicating that she was continuing the interview with Mr. Ryan McMann, previously identified for the record and sworn in, she picked up exactly where they'd left off yesterday.
"Please describe the vehicle you passed on River Road."
"It was green, dark green."
"And the make?"
He'd tell her exactly what he told the police, Ryan vowed grimly. Nothing less. Nothing more.
"A late model Taurus with gold trim and wheel spokes."
An hour later, Carly used the building key she'd been given to lock the door behind herself and Sergeant Hendricks. An unspoken acknowledgment lay between them. They'd wasted their time. McMann hadn't added a single detail to the statement he'd given the police. Nor had he displayed any emotion, any expression that would indicate he knew more about the murder, the victim, or the accused than he'd stated for the record.
Yet Carly couldn't shake the sense that he was holding something back. She'd had to drag every word out of him. Even then, he'd kept his thoughts shuttered behind his bruised face. Guilt nipped at her, along with a twinge of empathy for the man. That split lip must have hurt like hell. Were his injuries her fault? Had they resulted from his initial refusal to cooperate... and the phone call she suspected Parker had made to the warden?
A fresh wave of anger gripped Carly. With a brief good night to the court reporter, she unlocked her car, slung her briefcase into the passenger seat, and dug into her purse for her phone. As she'd anticipated, Parker was still at his desk. He answered on the first ring.
"DA's office. This is Stuart."
"Did you talk to the warden about McMann?"
"Carly?"
"I want an answer, Parker. Did you call him?"
"Yes."
"Dammit, I told you not to."
"Hey, that's what friends are for. I help you out when you need it, you help me out when I need it."
"I didn't ask for and I don't need your help handling my investigation. Got that?"
"Yes, ma'am, I surely do."
His amused response rubbed her exactly the wrong way.
"I mean it, counselor. In legal parlance, butt the hell out."
"Okay, okay Consider me butted." He paused. "Why don't you let me buy you dinner at Jubilee by way of apology?"
Her irritation rode too high even for dinner at Montgomery's best seafood restaurant. "Some other time. I've got work to do tonight."
He knew better than to push her. "All right. Some other time."
Still simmering, Carly hit the end button and dropped the phone back into her purse. She should head home, should review her notes and line up her questions before her interview with Colonel Smith tomorrow. Instead, she drove the short distance from the base headquarters to the JAG school. Before she could concentrate on Smith, she had to get a handle on the man whose testimony put the lieutenant colonel on River Road at the time of his wife's murder.
The B-52 mounted on a concrete pedestal at the juncture of Twining Street and Chennault Circle loomed huge against the dark cobalt sky. For once, no storm clouds blocked the moon hanging just above the bomber's wingtip.
It was a hunter's moon, full and round, the kind that used to get the hounds to howling out on the farm. Carly's lips curled at the memory. The Judge used to take her out to walk with him on nights like this. She'd breathe in the scent of honeysuckle closing up for the night with the same eagerness she breathed in her grandfather's tales of the cases he adjudicated during some forty years on the bench of the circuit court.
Leaving her MG in the well-lighted parking lot, she let herself in through the back door of the law center. A familiar mustiness greeted her when she walked into the library. Although today's legal professionals could access everything from state and federal statutes to supreme court opinions through computers, most law libraries still shelved bound copies of pertinent statutes for those diehards who got off on the real thing. Carly was one of them. She loved poring over the bound volumes, loved scanning the long, convoluted paragraphs that went on for pages. Somehow, the language of the law lost some of its elegance when transferred from the printed page to a flickering screen.
Despite her throwback tendencies, however, she could pound a keyboard as well or better than anyone at the center. With a smile of greeting to one or two of the students working assignments or researching case histories for presentation, she headed for one of the cubicles, dumped her briefcase on the floor and flicked on the terminal switch. The screen hummed to life a moment later. A quick sequence of commands brought up the main menu. Using her personal password, she went directly on-line to the National Legal Research Center's mas
sive database and keyed in the subject of her search.
She sat back, tapping her nails against the desktop while the computer whirred. The results other query flashed on the screen a moment later.
The U.S. versus McMann.
Fourth U.S. District Court, Northern District, State of New York.
Clicking on the case summary, Carly skimmed through the specific charges, a discussion of several motions to suppress made by the defense attorney during discovery, the preliminary hearings on admissibility, a summary of the trial itself. There was no appeal, which didn't surprise her considering that McMann had changed his plea to guilty halfway through his trial.
Propping her chin on the heel of her hand, Carly frowned at the screen. She'd prosecuted people for worse offenses than statutory rape with a willing seventeen-year-old and possession of an illegal substance. Far worse. McMann wouldn't have even come to trial in most states, given the overwhelming caseloads burdening the legal system these days. He could have copped a plea and received a suspended sentence, or ridden the trial out to the end and hoped the jury's sympathy would turn against the groupie who'd pursued him with such single-minded determination. Instead, the girl died and McMann changed his plea in mid trial.
Was the sensational trial just a ploy to pull him out of the Stanley Cup play-offs, as Carly's boss had hinted? If so, why had McMann suddenly come down with a bad case of conscience? Was there more to the situation than had made the press?
Deciding to request a copy of the verbatim transcript, Carly entered the governmental code that waived the standard processing fee for documents produced in the federal court system and zinged off the electronic form. A few moments later, the printer next to the monitor began spitting out page after page.
She left the law center twenty minutes later, her briefcase full. Given McMann's reversal of his plea in midtrial, the transcript didn't run to as many pages as some she'd seen, but it would give her a few hours of late night reading. Somehow, some way, she had to understand what made the key witness in her investigation tick.
River Rising Page 5
