Above the Law

by J. F. Freedman

  “These allegations are beyond distractions, honey,” Riva said. “They could bear directly on your case.”

  “How? Did Nora kill Juarez? Did Miller? No.” I continued: “If Nora or Tom Miller were in cahoots with Juarez, why would she have come to me to open an investigation? Does that make any sense? You let sleeping dogs lie, you don’t light a fire under them.”

  “No,” Kate admitted reluctantly. “That doesn’t compute.” She and Riva exchanged a glance.

  “And if they were involved with Juarez, which is really going out on a limb, why would they want him dead? Killing him makes no sense at all. You don’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.”

  Two nods of grudging agreement.

  “What about a connection with the tribe?” Kate threw out.

  I scoffed at that one. “They definitely wouldn’t want Juarez dead. If he was financing them, they need him alive. Think this through. Juarez funds a casino to launder drug money. The Indians have a way to get out of poverty. Everyone gets rich. Besides, there’s a hole in this. There weren’t any Native Americans there that night.”

  Kate shook her head in disagreement. “There was one.”

  “Who?” I asked. “I never heard anything about that. Where did you get that?”

  “Miller’s deputy, Bearpaw,” she reminded me. “And his mother’s a White Horse tribe elder. She’s the one who handed the deposit check to the BIA agent.”

  I’d forgotten about Bearpaw. And his mother being a tribal elder, that was interesting. I remembered her from our recent meeting, at Miller’s house.

  “Technically, you’re right,” I said as my pulse returned to normal, “but there’s a basic flaw in that theory. That particular possibility couldn’t have happened.”

  “Why not?”

  “Bearpaw wasn’t there. He went home an hour before Juarez escaped.”

  “I forgot that,” Kate fretted. She prides herself on being on top of everything.

  “Don’t worry, I don’t remember everything, either.” I pushed my point of view. “Do you think Miller actually killed Juarez? Technically, he was there. But a seventy-nine-year-old man outrunning all those buffed DEA agents?”

  As they shook their heads no, I said, “Of course not. And that is what this case is all about: who killed Juarez. We know who killed him. Jerome. All the evidence points to him, to him alone.” I stared at them. “Doesn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Kate admitted. “It does.”

  “Good. I’m glad you agree.”

  “I don’t,” Riva spoke up.

  “You don’t think Jerome killed Juarez?” I asked in disbelief.

  “I don’t mean I don’t think he killed him. But I think this has the earmarks of an action beyond a lone gunman, and that Kate should keep checking it out.”

  “Thank you,” Kate said in appreciative sisterhood.

  I threw up my hands.

  “Okay. I know when I’m outnumbered. You want to keep beating this horse,” I told Kate, “whack away. But don’t come to me again unless you have conclusive evidence—something that’s directly tied to this trial. No more hypotheses, conjectures, suppositions. Even if they seem to add up. I’ve got one job to do, I’m doing it, I want to get the fuck out of here, and I don’t want to get bogged down.”

  “So what about the contractor?” Kate asked, unable to not throw in a parting dig.

  “I’ll ask Nora, okay?” I told her testily. “Now I’ve got work to do.”

  I retreated to my little office and slammed the door behind me.

  PIN THE TAIL ON THE DONKEY

  NORA BLINKED IN SURPRISE—I’d caught her off-guard. “What about my house?” she asked.

  “You and Tom Miller built your houses at the same time.”

  She nodded. “So?”

  “You used the same architect-contractor. Who also built Juarez’s compound.”

  “Is there a problem with that?” she asked, seemingly unfazed.

  “Yeah, there is,” I said, put off by her lack of sensitivity to the propriety of the situation. “Explain to me how a district attorney and a sheriff used the same contractor as a drug dealer who’s operating right under their noses.”

  We were in her office, early in the morning. I’d stopped off on my way to court, calling her in advance and requesting that she meet with me. She’d assumed I wanted to discuss the trial. She’d been wrong.

  “Is there something illegal with that?” she asked, moving away from me, employing her desk as a barrier between us.

  “Maybe not illegal, Nora, but it looks bad.”

  “It looks bad to you, Luke?”

  “Of course it does.” This was annoying—she knew it looked bad. Why was she dancing around this?

  Even though I knew there might be fire under the smoke, I had resisted Kate’s and Riva’s entreaties to delve deeper into connections between Juarez, Nora, and Miller, because I didn’t want any distractions from the trial. Facing Nora across her desk now, I decided Kate was right—this needed deeper probing. Perhaps I had come to that decision because of Nora’s behavior toward me. But it was all of a piece, lack of discretion and regard for consequences.

  She frowned. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it does look bad.”

  “Not maybe. It does.”

  “There’s a very simple and innocent explanation.”

  “What is it?”

  She gestured to a chair. “Sit down, Luke. Do you want coffee?”

  I shook my head. “I have to be in court in fifteen minutes. I don’t have time.”

  “You can sit down at least, can’t you?”

  I sighed impatiently. “Yes, I can sit down.” I put my briefcase down next to the chair.

  She walked over to her corner credenza where a coffeepot was bubbling. “Do you remember my telling you, when we first got together, that I’d reconciled myself to living here, because of Dennis?” She got a carton of milk from her cube refrigerator. “And that after he died I decided to stay on?”

  “Yes.” I nodded. “I remember.”

  “When I made that choice, which was not easy—this was and still is a foreign country to me—I decided that if I was going to be here, I’d live as well as I could. Which meant having the nicest house I could, there’s not much else here for a woman like me. Unmarried. Childless.”

  She finished fixing her coffee and sat down across from me.

  “At the time, the compound was almost finished. I didn’t know Juarez was the owner. I thought it was some ordinary rich person, an oil sheik or computer whiz. Everyone did. All I knew was, whoever was doing the construction and design was doing a wonderful job. It was much better work than anyone around here does.”

  I recalled Joan, our au pair, saying the same thing.

  “So I drove over one day, walked onto the property, and introduced myself. Complimented the foreman on the job, mentioned that I was thinking of building a house myself, and that I might be interested in using them. A few days later, I got a call from Dean Vaca, the architect, and we made an appointment. The next time he came up, about a week later, he and I looked at the property my house is on. It was empty space then, it had been part of an old ranch that was subdivided years before. He gave me some ideas that I liked, the price was right and we got along, so I did it.”

  She blew on her coffee, took a tentative sip. “I didn’t know about Juarez. Dean didn’t, either. He’d been hired by an ac-. counting firm from L.A. All he cared about was that the checks cleared.” She drank some more coffee. “No mystery.” She smiled at me over her cup. “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

  “So I’ve been told. So you started on your house when?” I asked casually.

  “Soon after they were finished with the compound.”

  “And your parents paid for it?”

  She nodded, “I’m their only child, Luke. They could afford it, the money wasn’t important to them. My happiness was.”

  I heard the ding go off in my head. “What about
Miller?”

  “What about him?”

  “He happened to meet this same architect and decided to build a new house for himself, right at the time you were? An old man in his seventies?”

  She laughed. “He’s only old chronologically. I have a bet going with him that he’ll outlive me. I’m afraid he’ll collect from my estate.”

  She drank some of her coffee. “Anyway—Tom. He’d made quite a bit of money playing the market, and he didn’t have anything to spend it on. He’d lived for decades in this piss-poor house in town, he’s always been an ascetic. He heard I’d made the plunge, and he decided to, too. Treat himself well for once. He deserved it.” Another smile. “Truth be told, I talked him into it. Selfishly on my part, it helped me financially, because they used the same crew. Cheaper to build two houses at the same time than separately. And I knew it would be good for him. That’s what was most important.”

  “So that’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  I stood up. “Got to go.”

  “I’m sorry if this bothers you, Luke,” she said, watching me. “Maybe I should have mentioned the connection. It never occurred to me.”

  “No, that’s okay,” I said, making a show of dismissing the problem. “You can understand why I had a concern.”

  A head bob of understanding. “It’s a hazard of our profession. You get to thinking everyone’s guilty of something.” She paused. “Even people you care about.”

  “Yes,” I said as I picked up my briefcase and headed out the door. “Even them.”

  The courtroom was comfortably air-conditioned again, so the day’s proceedings went along amiably. John Q.’s witnesses were more of the same—character witnesses, agents who had been on the raid, men and women who had worked with Sterling Jerome and vouched that he was the best Boy Scout that ever pledged allegiance. My cross-examinations were efficient and concise—there was no evidence here, just smoke and mirrors. There weren’t going to be any more fireworks from the defense, unless Jerome took the stand.

  Kate and I had our usual end-of-the-day rendezvous at my office. I’d called her after leaving Nora, told her to continue her snooping. That had revved her up, of course; she’d wanted to know what had changed my mind, but I didn’t tell her I’d just left Nora, feeling less than satisfied. Just find out as much as you can as fast as you can, I’d instructed her.

  She was champing at the bit. She had her notebook out even before she sat down.

  “Been busy?” I asked.

  “As a beaver. Here goes.” She began reciting from her notes. “A month before Juarez’s compound was finished, Nora Ray and Tom Miller each deposited half a million dollars into their bank accounts. I checked up on Nora’s parents. They didn’t sell any stock around then, and they didn’t have any property they sold, either.” She looked up, beaming.

  She was smiling, and my stomach was in knots. “Go on.”

  “There’s no record of Miller selling a sizable amount of stock, either. His holdings at the time were less than fifty thousand dollars, old blue-chip stuff. No high techs. They came later.”

  “This is getting ugly. What else?”

  “You were right about Juarez laundering money through the Indians. They opened a special account at the time Juarez began building his Taj Mahal. There’s over two million dollars in it now.”

  “Is there a paper trail between the tribe and Juarez?”

  “I haven’t found one yet,” she admitted. “It’s drug money, it was probably all cash.”

  “Which will make the connection hard to prove, but not impossible.”

  “So what now?” She looked at me, ready for new orders.

  “Miller and Nora are involved in something ugly,” I said with a heavy heart. “I don’t know what, but there’s too much lurking around for them not to be. Maybe the tribe is, too. What’s eating at me is, how is this all connected? And is it related to the murder, directly?”

  I slammed my hand on the desk in frustration. “This is exactly what I didn’t want—complications. We had a nice little case going here, all tied up in a pretty bow. Now I’ve got a frigging Gordian knot.”

  Too much was happening, too fast. My head was reeling from the possibilities. “I may have to subpoena their bank records and other financial transactions, going back a decade.” I gave her a gloomy stare. “Is there anything else? Any more pain? I want it all now.”

  She hesitated before speaking. “There is one more thing. But it’s only a rumor. I wanted to check it out more before I brought it to you.”

  “Come on, give.” I was out of patience.

  “You know how you’ve told me that Nora stayed on here because of her husband? It was what he wanted?”

  I nodded. “She hung in to the end with him.”

  “From what I heard—and again, this is rumor—he wanted out. Too many bad memories here, it wasn’t panning out. Nora was the one who wanted to stay. She was the breadwinner, she made the call.”

  I was exhausted from the mental tension. “Do you have to be so damn competent? Why did you have to find all this out now? Couldn’t it have waited until the trial was over?”

  “Sorry, boss.”

  I slumped in my chair. “Forget I said that.” I jumped up from my chair. “Let’s take a ride.”

  There was a small amount of daylight still left by the time we got to the compound, enough late sun filtering through the trees for us to see the area clearly. We got out of the car and walked past the buildings to the wooded area where the DEA command post had been located. From there it took us about ten minutes to make our way through the trees to the spot by the overgrown access road where Juarez’s body was discovered.

  The DEA stakes were still in the ground, so it was easy to know where we were precisely. The old oak tree was dry and cracking from the summer’s heat and drought. Feeling around the trunk with my fingers, I located the actual hole. I took a ballpoint pen from my pocket and pushed it in, about three inches. The rest stuck out, about three inches. I looked at the angle for a moment.

  “What’re you looking for?” Kate asked. She slapped at a fly buzzing at her neck. We were both perspiring.

  “You’ve read the autopsy report on Juarez.”

  “Yes.”

  “The bullet entered his right temple, went through his brain, exited the left temple, and lodged here.” I tapped the ballpoint.

  She closed her eyes, recalling. “Yes, that’s right.”

  I walked back to where the body had been found, stood on the opposite side from the tree, and lined the two up. “He’s looking that way.” I pointed, along the path of the grown-over road. “When he was shot. That’s the angle it has to be, right? To be shot in the right temple, have the bullet exit the left side, land in the tree at this angle.”

  She came up behind me and sighted over my shoulder. “That’s right. That’s where he had to be looking.”

  “That was a hell of a fluke, for a bullet to enter his head and go through cleanly. All soft tissue, no bone. Then to burrow into a tree, thereby stripping the jacket, so ballistics couldn’t get a match.”

  Kate was on the same wavelength as I was. “Unless whoever shot Juarez was standing right next to him, so he—whoever he is—could line him up.”

  “Somebody he knew?” I was talking more to myself.

  “And expected?”

  I nodded. “It has to be.” I looked down at the overgrown pathway. “Let’s walk.”

  We started off down the narrow old access road. It hadn’t been cleared off for years. The vegetation had come back over where the cut had been, to the point that it was no longer usable for vehicles. Even walking was slow and difficult, beating a path through the grass and brambles.

  “Where’re we going?” Kate asked as she followed close behind me, brushing low branches out of her face.

  “I don’t know. I want to see if this goes anywhere.”

  We trudged through the thick undergrowth. After about two hundred yar
ds, the road widened—not much, but enough for a single vehicle to drive along it if the car had four-wheel drive. The path at this point had also been cleared. Not recently, but the signs were still there. I looked back at where we’d come from, then down the road.

  “I wonder where this leads,” I mused.

  “We can find out easily enough.” She started to take her book out to make a note. “A topo map, or the locals would know.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said, putting my hand up to stop her. “We don’t have to know where it goes.” I began walking back toward our starting point, Kate beside me. “We only had to know that it does.”

  We were back at the killing spot. I looked at the body position again, the pen in the tree, then toward the direction from which we’d come.

  “Juarez was a master at not getting caught. He’d avoided capture for a decade. Someone that slippery has a variety of escape routes, so if one is blocked, he has other avenues.” I thought about that for a second. “Which, to give Jerome his due, could be an excuse for charging in the way he did. If he’d waited Juarez out, which would have been the correct procedure by the book, Juarez might have snuck out somehow, under their noses. That would have been a monumental fiasco.”

  I hunkered down to where the body had lain, turned my shoulders, and looked down the narrow access road.

  “He wasn’t running blindly when he escaped.”

  This was a deduction I’d dreaded coming to, but now it was unavoidable. “He was running to something. A specific spot.”

  Kate looked down at me, followed my gaze to the road. “Here?”

  “I think so.”

  “To meet someone who was supposed to be here, to help him get away?”

  I took a deep breath—this could fuck me up royally. “That’s a logical conclusion to draw—that Juarez being at this particular spot was part of a plan.”

  It was almost dark. We started back to the car. The crickets and bullfrogs were in evening song now, call and response.

  “And Jerome caught up to him before his rescuer showed up? Otherwise, there would have been a witness.” She paused. “All the shooting could have scared whoever that was off. Ran away and left Juarez out to dry.”