Moment of Truth

by Lisa Scottoline

  “But I want Paige to know that I’m owning up to what I did. I want her to know that as awful as I am, at least I’m not so cowardly as to avoid responsibility for my crime.” His strong jaw set solidly, but Mary noticed that small muscle near his ear was clenching again. Eyes and jaws, what did it mean? Anything? Nothing?

  “Fine, I’ll tell her that you’re considering a guilty plea, but that’s it. The cops will probably leak that much by tomorrow morning. Agreed?”

  “Agreed. Also, I have to ask you a personal favor, if I may.” Jack looked plainly uncomfortable, which disarmed Mary. A handsome, wealthy killer who acted like a nice guy. Confusing, to say the least.

  “Sure, what?”

  “Paige will be very upset about this news. If she is, would you stay with her awhile? She doesn’t have many friends.”

  “Yes,” Mary answered, though it went without saying. But something didn’t jibe. A pretty, rich girl, without friends? What was up with this family? “What about her classmates? Where does she go to school?”

  “Paige is not your typical sixteen-year-old. She looks adult, acts adult, and earns money like an adult. She’s privately schooled around her work schedule. She left most of her peer group behind a long time ago, and her boyfriend, at least this latest one, isn’t much help. Just stay with her until she feels better and see if she wants to come see me. I’d love to see her tonight and try to explain this to her.”

  “I’ll tell her that, too.” Mary couldn’t imagine the daughter wanting to see her father in these circumstances. She stood up and packed her pad and pen away. “I think we’re finished here, for now. The next step for you is an arraignment, which is when they charge you formally and make a bail determination. I would guess they’ll do that in the morning, but there’s a chance that it could happen tonight.” She glanced at Judy, who nodded. “Judy will stay at the Roundhouse until I get back, in case they do. Do you have any questions?” Mary stood up with her packed briefcase, and Jack smiled, which had the effect of making her feel like a grade school kid, her briefcase transformed into a school bag.

  “No questions at all. You did pretty well,” he said, and she laughed, flushing, as she led Judy to the door.

  “Beginner’s luck. See you in the morning.”

  “Take care of Paige,” he said, and the slight crack in his voice made Mary pause.

  “Don’t worry,” she heard herself say, without understanding why.

  5

  When a homicide as big as Honor Newlin’s happens in a city as small as Philadelphia, everybody knows about it right away. Emergency dispatch hears first, then homicide detectives, EMS drivers, reporters tuned to police scanners, the M.E., the crime labs, and the deputy police commissioners. Simultaneously the mayor, the police commissioner, and the district attorney get beeped, and the district attorney assigns the case as soon as the call comes in. The assignment, as crucial as it is, doesn’t take much thought, because the result is preordained. In death, as in life, everybody has a pecking order; when a nobody gets killed, the case gets assigned to any one of a number of bright young district attorneys, all smart as hell and fungibly ambitious. But the murder of a woman the status of Honor Newlin, by a lawyer the status of Jack Newlin, could go to only one district attorney.

  “Go away,” Dwight Davis said, picking up the phone.

  Even though it was late, Davis was at his desk at the D.A.’s office, putting the finishing touches on a brief. His desk was cluttered, the room harshly bright, and a Day-Glo blue jug of Gatorade sat forgotten on his desk. A marathon runner by hobby, Davis seemed hardwired never to tire. A constant current of nervous energy crackled though his body, and if he missed his daily run, he was unbearable. The secretaries had been known to throw his sneakers at him, a heavy hint to take off, since they thought Davis got away from work by running. They didn’t know that when he ran, all he thought about, stride after stride, mile after mile, was work. Murder cases, crime scenes, and jury speeches fueled his longest and best workouts.

  “You’re shittin’ me,” Davis said into the phone. “At Tribe?”

  He often woke up with a legal argument on the tip of his tongue. He thought up his best closing arguments on the john. He told the funniest war stories in the D.A.’s office and laughed the hardest at everyone else’s. Nothing thrilled, intrigued, or delighted him as much as being a prosecutor. In short, he loved his job.

  “They got it on video? That, plus the nine-one-one tapes? Oh that’s beautiful, that’s just beautiful!”

  Davis burst into merry laughter. At what? At how the mighty had fallen? No, he wasn’t mean. He was just happy. Happy to be alive, now, here, to draw the Newlin case. It was the reason he had turned down being promoted every time they’d offered it to him. The pay was better but he didn’t want to process vacation requests, count sick days, hire secretaries, or fire paralegals. Why be a desk jockey when you can try cases? Why walk when you can run? And why try birdshit when you can try Jack Newlin?

  “They got the knife? They got his prints on the knife? Tell ’em to move their asses down there!”

  He couldn’t stop smiling, he felt so good. The biggest case in the city, bar none, and Newlin had the bucks to hire the best. Competition thrilled Davis, and he had the best record in the office. Why did he win so much? The question engendered gossip, speculation, and jealousy among the other D.A.s. Some thought he won because he was decent-looking and juries loved him. Not a bad theory. Clear hazel eyes, thick black hair, a well-formed mouth, and a sinewy runner’s body. He was just under average height, but even his relative shortness worked in his favor; he managed to appeal to women jurors without threatening male jurors. But his looks weren’t why he won.

  “Who’s on it from Two Squad? Brinkley, Kovich? Excellent!” Davis ran a hand through his hair, cut short for convenience. “Chief, don’t let Diego anywhere near that house, you hear? The man’s a loose cannon!”

  Other D.A.s thought Davis won because he worked his ass off. It was plausible, considering his hours. He lived the job and was there all the time; in the morning when others straggled in and at night when others staggered home. The life of a typical D.A. was a constant battle for time; it was almost impossible to try cases all day in court and still do the paperwork that had to get done, but Davis managed both. Of course, he had no personal life. His marriage didn’t survive the first year and they’d had no children. He kept a small, empty apartment in town. He didn’t even have a dog to run with. But his dedication wasn’t why he won, either.

  “Who’s Newlin got for representation? Don’t tell me it’s a P.D., not with his money. Hey, I heard a good joke, Chief — what do a nun and a public defender have in common? Neither can get you off!”

  The reason Davis won was simple: he won because he loved to win. The man was a self-fulfilling prophecy with a briefcase. He won for the same reason that money comes to the rich and fortune to the lucky. Winning was his favorite thing in the world. Winning was what Davis did for fun.

  “Who? DiNunzio? What’s a DiNunzio?”

  He loved to win like a thoroughbred loves to race. As a little boy he’d shoot the moon, playing hearts at the kitchen table, and as a college quarterback he’d try the Hail Mary to the end zone. In court, he did anything he had to do to win, took whatever risks he had to take, and made whatever arguments he had to make. And it was precisely because he took those risks and made those arguments that they became the right risks and the right arguments and he won. Nor was Davis afraid of losing. He knew that losing was proof of being in the game. You couldn’t win if you were afraid of losing.

  “Oh, oh, only one problem, Chief,” he said suddenly. “Bad news. I just realized something. I can’t take the Newlin case. I can’t take this case for you.”

  His expression sobered abruptly. His face fell into the lines of nascent middle age, a wrinkle that bracketed his full mouth and a tiny pitchfork that popped in the middle of his forehead. Something chased the delight from his keen eyes. His mouth d
rooped at the corners.

  “Why, you ask? Why can’t I take the Newlin case, Chief? I’ll tell you why. Because it’s too fuckin’ easy!”

  He howled with laughter as he hung up and threw his Bic pen at the dartboard hanging across from his desk. He didn’t look to see where the pen had landed because it didn’t matter. He rose quickly and grabbed a fresh legal pad, for that clean-slate feeling. Davis didn’t have time for games.

  He was on his way to a murder scene.

  6

  Detective Reginald Brinkley stood alone in Two Squad’s coffee room, which was shaped like a shoe box on its end. Yellowed panels of fluorescent lighting intensified the grim cast to the room without illuminating it. Sparsely furnished as the rest of the Roundhouse, the coffee room contained a steel-legged table on which rested a Bunn coffee machine and a square brown refrigerator. Everybody used the coffee machine; nobody used the refrigerator. Inside it was an open can of Coke, a white plastic fork, and twenty-odd packets of soy sauce.

  To Brinkley the room smelled familiar, like fresh coffee and stale dust, and he felt at home in its institutional gray-green walls, plastered with outdated memos, Polaroid photos from the Squad’s softball team, and a black bumper sticker bearing the unofficial motto of the Homicide Division: our day begins when yours ends. The slogan also appeared on black sweatshirts and T-shirts under a picture of a smiling Grim Reaper, but the joke had worn thin to Brinkley and the other detectives. They never wore the shirts. They gave them away as gag gifts.

  He shook Cremora into his hot coffee, in a thick Pep Boys mug. It was late at night but he hardly needed the caffeine. He tolerated the rotating tours pretty well; like his father he was partial to night work and he was still jiggered up from his interview with Newlin. It was impossible to tell by looking at him that he was jiggered up, which was what his wife, Sheree, used to complain about. You don’t let me in, she used to say, like a daytime soap opera, and she’d even got him to go to a shrink over it. Brinkley had loved her that much.

  He flinched inwardly at those memories. The couple had sat on the soft couch side by side for a full year, while Sheree and the lady shrink discussed Brinkley, his personality, his job, and his feelings. He rarely interrupted their conversation; they had him figured out so good he didn’t have to come to the damn party. The therapy was bullshit anyway. Sheree was changing, by then was converting to Muslim, which finished them off. She had moved out over a year ago, and still he couldn’t bring himself to answer the letters from her lawyer. Fuckin’ lawyers.

  He watched the tiny mountain of Cremora dissolve in his coffee, like a white island sinking slowly into a black sea. He hastened its demise by stirring the coffee gingerly with his index finger. The brew was too hot for his taste, and he had to wait for Kovich anyway. Brinkley had come to the coffee room to get away from the noise in the squad room. The guys not out on jobs were talking the Super Bowl pool again, and he had to think. He watched the black vortex in his mug while he thought about one lawyer in particular. Jack Newlin.

  Brinkley hated lawyers, but for some reason, Newlin didn’t strike him as the typical lawyer, much less the typical killer. Brinkley had sat across from psychos, wise guys, and bangers who’d just as soon cap you as sneeze. It always gave him a cold feeling in his gut when he took their confessions, delivered in a monotone but filled with details that made him sick. Last week he had listened to a punk tell him how he had tortured an old lady to death with a box cutter. The kid had looked stone bored when he told how he’d raped her postmortem.

  Brinkley stirred up the coffee again, making a new whirlpool with his finger, and blew on it, preoccupied. Newlin didn’t fit the abuser profile, either. Brinkley remembered the ones he’d convicted; Sanchez, McGarroty, Wertelli. Losers, the lot of ’em. They were the opposite of the stone-cold psychos; they had emotion to burn, hearts like speedballs of rage. They usually had a bad employment history, dotted with booze, crack, or coke, and they were repeaters. Newlin didn’t fit the bill. He was successful, his emotions tame and controlled, and two Scotches could “enrage” him. Plus Brinkley had double-checked the file of suspected domestic abuse cases from local hospitals. Newlin’s wife wasn’t in them.

  He kept blowing on his coffee, thinking. Then again, Newlin probably was the doer. The man confessed, and so what if the story wasn’t smooth? Newlin might have been disoriented by the whole thing; murder had a way of throwing you for a loop. And Newlin was a lawyer and he’d be used to manipulating the system. He did it for a living, got rich doing it. He would bet he could whack his wife and come out smelling like a rose. That was why he’d called his lawyer at the end. Figured the story was confused enough to maybe get him off. Or maybe Newlin wanted to spill his guts, cut a quick deal, and be out in no time.

  Brinkley shook his head. He used to think only rich white folks got away with murder until O.J. proved that rich black folks could buy justice, too. It gave a man hope. He sipped his coffee as Kovich entered the room.

  “Cold enough?” Kovich asked, making a beeline for the coffeemaker.

  “Not yet.”

  “Don’t know how you can drink coffee cold, especially with a fresh pot of hot sittin’ right here.”

  “Where were you? I been waitin’ on you.” Brinkley held his mug at a distance from his clean suit, mindful of his partner’s clumsiness. “I want to get to the scene.”

  “I know, so do I.” Kovich reached for a Styrofoam cup and poured himself coffee. “I was in the little boy’s. Shoot me.”

  “You were not. You were betting the Super Bowl pool.”

  “Not me. Games of chance are illegal in the Commonwealth.” Kovich drank his coffee.

  “Hurry up. We should’ve been to the scene already. It’s ass-backwards, talking to the husband first. I sounded like an asshole askin’ him where the knife was. It was like shootin’ in the dark.”

  “What were we gonna do? We had no choice. The guy calls nine-one-one and confesses. They had to arrest him on the scene and we had to question him right away. The lieutenant didn’t want Newlin on ice. We got a full confession and it’s admissible. Shit, he woulda signed if—” Kovich stopped short. Both men knew the end of the sentence. If you hadn’t fucked up, Mick.

  Brinkley let the moment pass. He’d been right to question Newlin, and the lawyer was hardly the first suspect to change his mind about signing a confession. Brinkley didn’t want to argue about it. He’d been partners with Kovich for five years and they had fallen into an easy, if distant, relationship. It was the way Brinkley liked it; he would accept Kovich’s social invitations when he couldn’t get out of it, but had never even asked Kovich why he called Brinkley “Mick” instead of Reg. Or why he always said, “Sorry, Cholly.” Or “I guess, Bill.”

  “Lemme have this one cup, then we go to the scene. Pick up what we need.”

  “Pick up what we need?” Brinkley asked. “That means you like him?”

  “I don’t like him, I love him.” It was code. Detectives talked about which suspects they “liked.” If they liked someone, they suspected him of murder. If they “loved” him, he was as guilty as sin. Nobody but Brinkley remarked the irony.

  “You know what? I don’t think I like him,” Brinkley said, surprising even himself, and Kovich stopped drinking his coffee.

  “What?”

  “I don’t like him. At least, not yet.”

  “Oh jeez. Say what? You gotta be kiddin’ me, Mick.”

  “No.”

  “What’re you talk in’? It’s a duck!” Slang for an easy case. It waddled in the door.

  “You heard me. I’m not sure yet.”

  “Aw, hell. Why don’t you like him?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Mick—”

  “I’ll think of a reason.”

  “Mick. Honey. Baby. We got him on tape. The scumbag told you the story, hung together just fine. He had her blood on his friggin’ hands. The uniforms were right to place him under. The lab’s gonna find his prints on
the knife.”

  “It’s his knife and his house. Of course they’re gonna find his prints.”

  “In blood?”

  “Don’t start with me on the knife anyway.” Brinkley had thrown a fit when he heard the techs had already bagged the knife. He had wanted to see it where it lay at the scene, and Polaroids weren’t as good as the real thing.

  “The lab is workin’ on a match. Ten to one they get a full print in blood and it’s his.”

  “Did you call again? Any results?”

  “In an hour. They know it’s a box job.” A rush job, reserved for high-profile homicides. Two Squad hadn’t seen many murders that were higher profile than Newlin. “They already called the D.A., Mick. We’ll be able to arraign Newlin in the morning.”

  “No.” Brinkley had been worrying it would go down this way, the tail wagging the dog. “It’s too soon. I’m the assigned, I’m in charge. I call this shot, not them, for Chrissake.”

  “Look, it’s a silver platter. Newlin admitted to dispatch he did her. The uniforms told us there’s no sign of robbery, nothing out of place. He came clean with us, right off. He wanted to get it off his chest, you heard him, and he was nervous as shit. I never saw anybody look that guilty, did you?” Kovich glanced out the door and lowered his voice. “Besides, I gotta tell you they want us to clear this case? It’s a monster. We arraign Newlin right away, we look sharp by the time it hits the papers. If we don’t charge him, we look like we’re playing favorites.”

  “What favorites?”

  “He’s white, didn’t you notice? Here I thought you was a big-time detective.” Kovich smiled, but it faded quickly. “I don’t get you, buddy. I thought you hated lawyers.”

  “I do. That’s why I don’t like being worked by one.”

  “You think he’s working us?” Kovich looked concerned. He wasn’t dumb, none of the detectives was. You had to be the elite to reach the detective level under the new commissioner. It was like the whole force came collectively to attention at the appointment. “Setting up his own ass? Why?”