Judgement Day

by Andrew Neiderman

  3

  Michele Armstrong paused in front of the entrance to One Hogan Place and took a deep breath, as deep a breath as a high diver might take before leaping and soaring off the board. It was really the way she felt. She had been on the New York County district attorney’s team for more than three weeks, but she still couldn’t shake off the feeling every morning that this was her first day on the job. It still had that new-car scent. Everything, no matter how old it really was, looked and felt crisp and new to her, whether it was her desk, her phone, or her computer.

  After graduating from Cornell University and the New York University School of Law, Michele went to work for the Orange County, New York, district attorney’s office and lived with her parents, who had a refurbished farmhouse in Goshen. She racked up a half dozen impressive convictions of violent criminals, two homicides in five years, and was recruited by the New York DA. It was a stage on which she had always dreamed she’d play.

  Michele’s driving ambition amazed and amused her mother, who had taught grade school for twenty years and as soon as she was eligible for retirement without penalty, had taken it. She often talked about being a lady of leisure as if it was genetic to the sex. Michele’s mother wasn’t always like that. She had started out ambitious and dedicated, but she hardened, grew more cynical, and although she was proud of Michele’s accomplishments, she never hid her hope that Michele would marry well and calm down. “Calm down” meant stop pursuing a career as though there was nothing else worthwhile in life.

  “Half the women you know and will know will resent you for being successful, as will more than half the men.”

  “We’re not Islamic fundamentalists, Mom,” she countered.

  Her mother shrugged. “Most of those women don’t complain, at least half the ones I know.”

  Frustrated, Michele avoided arguments the way one would avoid a traffic jam. She looked for detours into new subjects, often so unimportant that she barely listened to her mother’s comments. Why couldn’t her mother look at her as someone more than just another woman? Parents didn’t look at a son as just another man.

  “Nothing’s changed since Adam and Eve walked out of Paradise and started the fashion industry,” she concluded. She always liked to conclude a serious subject with a dry or sarcastic joke. In that way, she wasn’t unlike her father. He was a master of moving smoothly from deeply serious topics to light, satirical ones. His automobile customers loved it.

  When it came to her career ambitions, her father never discouraged her. However, she would admit that he didn’t pressure her to do any more or any less. Wherever she settled, at whatever level, he would be satisfied. He owned and operated a successful Chevrolet dealership just outside Middletown, New York, and at times seemed as married to that as he was to her mother and as much a parent to his employees as he was to her and her brother.

  Her younger brother, Bailey, worked with their father and had recently married Amanda Morris, a girl in his high school class whom he had pursued unsuccessfully when they were younger. Amanda had married her high school sweetheart a year after graduation but got divorced only six months later and then had gone to Albany Business College. Soon after, with the help of some of her own father’s influential friends, she landed a management position at New York State Electric and Gas. It wasn’t long before Bailey started dating her. Michele was just warming up to her, wary that her brother might have been running on the steam of his high school crush and taken on more baggage than he knew.

  However, none of that could hold her attention now. She had moved into the city rather than do a commute of an hour, and although she could afford a good apartment, she had accepted the invitation to live with her aunt Eve, her mother’s eccentric older sister, widowed with no children. Her mother didn’t think she’d last a week living with her sister, whom she rarely ever saw these days. The two sisters looked a bit alike but couldn’t be more different in temperament and priorities.

  Aunt Eve owned a loft apartment in SoHo, and Michele found her quite entertaining, if not outright comical on the surface, especially the way she dressed, in tie-dyed outfits, gaudy jewelry, and exotic headbands. Ever since she and her husband had been in a horrendous car accident, which took her husband’s life and left her in a coma for nearly two weeks, Aunt Eve had been quite spiritual, and in fact, for the last four years, she had been a practicing psychic. She had a devoted following and did readings three days a week in her home. The house was full of spiritual artifacts, herbal medicines, and talismans to ward off evil. Her supposed ability to channel the dead won her the moniker the “Shirley MacLaine of SoHo.” Aunt Eve was a great contrast with Michele’s mother; she had a joyful, cheery temperament most of the time and was always encouraging. It was a delight to be with her.

  As usual, she gave Michele a good-luck charm this morning before Michele left for the office. Today’s was a magic eye amulet, a “Good Eye” to attract positive energy and ward off evil. Michele fingered it in her jacket pocket and entered the building.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” David Duggan chanted as she headed for her office. He was the executive director of communications for the district attorney’s office. One of the many so-called wunderkinder in this office, David, at just thirty-eight, had been a New York Times reporter and a congressional spokesperson before taking a job in a public relations firm and then gracefully moving into the district attorney’s office after being courted. He was a brilliant wordsmith who knew how to finesse any comment so as not to offend or bring any more attention than was necessary. After the short time she had known him, Michele thought he could convince God that Lucifer didn’t mean to create a rebellion in heaven. He might refer to it as some sort of creative repositioning at a press conference at the Pearly Gates.

  David was somewhat awkward when it came to women, though, especially attractive women. He stumbled and stammered and often said silly things, rushing to hide his nervousness. Michele knew from the way she caught him looking at her that he thought she was very attractive. And her beauty, with her great figure and rich complexion, must have made her seem unapproachable to him. One might wonder how a woman like Michele was not being pursued by eligible bachelors, especially in New York. Unattached and looking like that? Was she gay? Michele was the sort of woman any man thought was already booked for the weekend. It wouldn’t occur to him that she was free.

  “How was your weekend?” David asked her before she turned to go into her office. “I hope it was better than mine. Mine was a war zone, between things going bad at my apartment, the refrigerator dying, a toilet overflowing, and my mother’s problems with my sister, who broke up with her fiancé, and . . . forget it. I’ll ruin your makeup with my list,” he concluded.

  Michele studied him for a moment, then smiled and went into her office without giving him an encouraging word. He wasn’t her type, not that she had settled yet on what her type was. Maybe she was too particular and demanding, as her mother often accused her. After all, compromising your ideals was the fastest way to any semblance of happiness. So wrote the modern prophets.

  The moment she entered her office, her secretary, Sofia Walters, came rushing in, her large breasts lifting and falling like water balloons. The overweight thirty-seven-year-old woman with dark brown hair looked as if she had just seen a ghost. Every feature in her face, however, was prone to exaggeration when something excited her, especially her hazel eyes. They looked as if they might explode.

  “You’re up!” She practically gasped.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re up for it. I heard Mr. Barrett talking to Mrs. Rozwell minutes before she told me to have you go right to her office. You’re being assigned your first case,” she declared, and clapped her hands like someone trying to kill a fly.

  “What do you know about it?”

  Sofia shook her head. Michele was a quick study. She had picked up on Sofia’s quirky ways quickly. She shook her head, but that didn’t mean “No” or “I don’t know anything.
” It meant that what she knew impressed her in some way. It was more like “You won’t believe it.”

  “What?”

  “Murder case,” she said. “A high-profile one, too.”

  Michele hung up her jacket and straightened her skirt. She glanced at herself in a small makeup mirror she had brought to her office on the first day, and then nodded. “Well, let’s go get it,” she told Sofia, and walked out quickly, her heart pounding with glee. After all, this was why she wanted to be here, wasn’t it?

  She walked down the corridor to Eleanor Rozwell’s office. Rozwell was chief of the trial division and was all nuts-and-bolts and no window dressing. Michele had never met an emotionally harder woman. She made some of Michele’s tough law professors look like pussies. She spoke so sharply sometimes that she could cut your ears. There was no nonsense in anything she did or said. She never seemed to relax, even when she left the job at the end of the day. Michele was convinced that Rozwell’s husband had to be a wimp. No strong-willed man could live with a woman like her.

  Despite this, in some ways, Michele wanted to be like her. She certainly wanted to have her dedication and self-confidence, but she also recognized that something preciously feminine had been sacrificed. Rozwell had no children. She kept herself to being more correct than attractive, her makeup applied with almost surgical precision. Her hair was always perfect, not a strand rebellious, and she dressed in conservative skirt-and-jacket suits that did little for her good figure. She was stern but not manly enough to attract any ridicule. Michele’s first impression of her was that she was content with only giving birth to successful prosecutions. No miscarriages, and certainly no abortions, not in the New York courts.

  “’Morning, Eleanor,” Michele said, entering after she had been announced.

  Rozwell continued to write whatever note she was writing, her head down, her concentration unbroken. Michele stood there, almost at attention. It could have been a meeting in some military officer’s office.

  Slowly, Rozwell looked up and studied her for a moment, as if she was making a final decision about her decision. A good three seconds passed. Michele didn’t break her gaze, nor did she make the slightest nervous gesture.

  “Mike thinks you’re right for this,” she began. “A man named Elliot Strumfield was murdered a little less than six weeks ago in his home. The chief investigator on the case, Lieutenant Matthew Blake, has had someone in the frame from day one. Strumfield was the CEO of Strumfield Investments, a moderate-size hedge fund. He and his wife, Cisley, had a penthouse apartment in the Waterford Building on East Sixtieth and First Avenue. All of the tenants are high-worth individuals. There’s a former secretary of state living there.”

  “I know of the building,” Michele said, hoping to get to the bottom line a little faster.

  Instead of being annoyed by the interruption and the implication, Rozwell smiled. She admired a no-nonsense, waste-not-a-moment employee, whether it was a janitor or an assistant district attorney. “The security is pretty tight, as you can imagine. Strumfield, it appears, had discovered that his junior partner, Lester Heckett, had, over some time, siphoned a few hundred thousand off the books. According to Cisley Strumfield, her husband had confirmed his suspicions and confronted Heckett and was on the verge of turning him in to the police. Heckett had begged for a few days to restore the money. Strumfield gave it to him with the codicil that he would resign, but Strumfield was shot twice in the head with a thirty-eight soon after. Very professional hit-man style, not that I’m an expert on it.

  “Cisley reported seeing Heckett near the building just after the murder. She hadn’t been home at the time and appears to have arrived minutes afterward. A subsequent search of Heckett’s apartment turned up the murder weapon. Of course, he denies having been there and says Mrs. Strumfield is mistaken. Unfortunately, she is the only one who saw him there.”

  “As I said, I know that building. Didn’t Heckett have to sign in to visit?” Michele asked.

  “Somehow he didn’t.”

  “The receptionist doesn’t recall him being there?”

  “No, but he could have gotten past her. The receptionist at that time of day is a Mrs. Karey Ireland, sixty-two and relatively new on the job. It’s the only small hole in this. Meaningless in light of everything else. He had the murder weapon in his house.”

  “Prints?”

  “No, but the gun was in his possession.”

  “What about the bullets?”

  “No. Maybe he wore gloves when he put them in.”

  “He didn’t have a permit for it?”

  “No.” She grimaced as if she were swallowing bitter medicine. “There’s no trace of the gun to him, but he could have gotten it from some illegal source. It’s an unregistered weapon with the serial numbers filed off. Gangland-style.”

  “I won a case once because of fingerprints on the bullets,” Michele muttered, more to herself.

  “Well, this case is different. No cases are the same.”

  Michele nodded quickly. “Was the weapon traced to any other crime?” she asked.

  “No. At least, not yet. The rest looks like a slam dunk. He has motive and not much of an alibi. Of course, Heckett claims he’s innocent. He was surprised to discover the gun in his house. Naturally, he claims he’s being framed. He hired Simon and James to represent him. They assigned a hotshot member of the firm, reportedly about to be made a partner. His name was Warner Murphy.”

  “Was?”

  “Warner Murphy seems to have committed suicide. Simon and James, we learned, are going to ask for a postponement, and when they do, they are probably going to get it, which is fine. Gives you more time to put icing on the cake. Here’s the file.”

  Rozwell didn’t hand it to Michele. She just touched it and then lifted her hand away as if she was daring her to take it. Maybe, for some reason, she thought Michele might hesitate. Why? It did look like a slam dunk: motive, weapon, opportunity, identified at the crime scene, nice things for a brand-new trial assistant district attorney to have. She practically leaped forward to pick it up.

  “There’s going to be a full-blown article on the case now, with references to Heckett’s attorney’s suicide and a more detailed look into the lives of the wealthy in New York. Talk to Dave Duggan about any press releases or answers to reporters’ questions after you’re up to speed. Good luck,” Rozwell added, and she made a gesture with her pen that could not be misunderstood to mean anything but “Dismissed.”

  Michele clutched the file to her chest, nodded, and walked out. She held it like a prize she had won. After all, she’d been here less than a month, and her name would be in all the New York papers, and she would be on TV with press releases. Her parents would be surprised, especially her mother.

  She had gotten into law and decided to be a prosecutor because she believed she could make a difference in the battle between good and evil, but she would be lying to herself, and anyone who asked, if she didn’t admit that vanity also drove her. Fame—even more than fortune, as proven by the fact that she hadn’t gone into some lucrative law practice, which she could have easily done—drove her as much as her desire to render justice and be an advocate for victims and their families.

  What’s the difference? she thought whenever she felt a little guilty about her vanity, if the final result was the same and the bad guy was punished? It’s Adam Smith’s concept of capitalism, the Invisible Hand. Serve yourself well, and you’ll serve others well.

  Besides, she thought, it’s the way we’re all built. It’s human nature, ever since the first caveman scratched his name on a wall so he’d live forever.

  She smiled at Sofia, tapped the file, and said, “Let’s get to work.”

  Like the announcers at the trotter track her father loved to take her to, she declared, with a little modification, “The horse is in the hands of the starter!”

  It wasn’t a race, but it was a competition, and she practically reveled in competition. It excited her. S
he was convinced that it was in her nature to be this way and that this, probably more than anything else, was what made her a different sort of woman from her mother.

  4

  Kaye Billups looked up from her receptionist’s desk even before the door of Simon and James Associates was opened. It was odd the way something had seized her attention and taken her away from the thank-you notes she was writing to those who had already expressed their condolences through cards or baskets of flowers and fruit. Not only did this strange feeling take her attention away, but it brought a flush to her cheeks and quickened her heartbeat. It was like one of those movie moments when a character looks up just when a storm is about to blow out the windows of her home or something horrible is about to come crashing in on her. She was actually holding her breath.

  There was a logical reason for these feelings, of course. She was terribly high-strung these days. Poor Mr. Murphy. What could have happened? And that beautiful wife and child, how devastated they had to be. She was still sick to her stomach thinking about them. From the moment she heard the news, she had felt as though she had been turned inside out. Her body felt raw and vulnerable, and like everyone else in the office, she was constantly on the verge of tears.

  The door opened.

  John Milton stood there for a moment as if he was expecting applause on his entrance. Still without stepping forward and closing the door behind him, he gazed around the plush lobby, nodding at the large painting of a country lawyer holding up a Bible and saying something to convince a skeptical-looking judge. The richly paneled walls in the lobby were complemented by the tiled floor. There were baskets of flowers and fruit on the dark cherrywood tables flanking the two settees, and more baskets and cards were on the tables in front of them. Recessed lighting poured a little too much brightness for his taste. He also thought the curtains on the two windows were blah, even drab. He nodded to himself, confirming that a great many changes would have to be made here. The firm owned the building, so redecorating was inevitable.