My eyes followed one of the many trails of blood up the front side of the desk to the handprint I’d spotted yesterday. I studied it again, even closer this time, wondering how many breaths were still left in his lungs when he’d tried to pull himself upward, praying that somehow he’d be saved.
But I’d had no idea he was even here. No reason to believe he’d needed me. Damn, why hadn’t I asked him to stick around The Jewel that night? Or maybe I could have offered to tag along. A cop working solo at an off-duty assignment was often the most vulnerable. All the officers knew it, but rarely did anyone say a word about the possible risk. It was similar to a baseball dugout when a pitcher was in the eighth inning of a no-hitter. No one wanted to jinx him. Cops had a similar mindset about situations that involved potential danger. The unwritten rule was to prepare for the worst, hope for the best, but keep it to yourself.
An electronic ring made me twitch. The racket filled up the room as I pulled the gadget from my back pocket.
I saw Alisa’s name pop up on the mini-screen. “What do you know, blondie?”
“Maybe a lot, maybe nothing at all, but I need to share it with someone. Someone with a brain,” she said with a sharp tongue.
I thought I heard mumbling in the background.
“Are you down in the bar?”
A blast of air pumped through the phone. She must have sighed. “No, actually the bar has come up to the office.”
Lifting out of my crouch, I shuffled around the outline of the body, ensuring I stayed clear of the evidence. I moved to the other side of the desk.
“Alisa, have you been taking a little nip from one of Justin’s nicer bottles of wine?”
“Not you too,” she moaned.
She was on edge. In the background, I heard laughter, two older voices talking over each other, then the clink of glasses.
“Alisa, it’s me. What’s going on?”
“Justin, what else?”
“What did he do now?” I asked while I began to examine the top of the desk. I started in one corner and methodically let my eyes process every pen, piece of paper, blood droplet, hoping something would click.
“He’s all pissy that I’m not working my shift and—”
“I am not pissy,” I heard him yell in the background.
“Whatever.”
Suddenly, the phone sounded like it had been dropped into a garbage disposal.
“Alisa?”
“Hold on,” she said.
The whirling engine sound geared down, then Alisa rustled with the phone before joining me.
Another loud sigh.
“I literally have to work two jobs at once just to keep everyone happy.”
“What the hell is going on?”
“Justin said he’s slammed downstairs, and a lot of the regulars said they wouldn’t order unless I was their server. I called Justin’s bluff and said if they wanted me to serve them, then they’d have to get off their lazy asses, march up the fourteen steps to the office, and I’d make their drinks and serve them in between my research.”
“Okay…”
“I didn’t know he’d take me seriously.”
“See, it wasn’t my fault after all,” Justin said in the background.
“I’ll deal with you later,” she said.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Not you, Booker. I was talking to One Nut.”
“Oh, don’t you go there,” I heard Justin say.
“I’m ignoring him because I need to share this information with you.”
My heart beat a little faster. “You found a nugget inside the files Henry sent?”
“Nothing stands out yet, but I’m going to go through them a second time. This information comes from Judge Fischer’s memoir. Bernice and her nephew dropped it off while we were at the hospital.”
“I’m listening.”
“The read is very interesting. While he shares some of his personal life, even meeting Bernice, he focuses a lot of the book on cases that came before his appeals court. He devoted an entire chapter to cases that troubled him the most, the ones that had really impacted his life and the decisions he made.”
I could sense Alisa had found something relevant. I tried to listen while scouring the desk.
“You have my full attention,” I said, taking a step back, eyeing three drawers begging for me to open them.
“Listen to this passage, Booker. It really makes him seem so…human. He wrote, ‘This case devoured every aspect of my life. I couldn’t sleep or eat for a week. My wife thought I was having a nervous breakdown. I didn’t even take my dog, Bentley, on his nightly walk. He would nudge my leg while I sat at my desk, my hands anchoring my heavy head, as I studied the case. Even Bentley seemed to understand how my core had been shaken. I was torn right down the middle. Make a judgement based solely on the law or allow my instinct to play a role in my decision?’”
“Wow. He was carrying a heavy burden. Do you have more details about the case itself?” I asked, looking for something to pull open the drawers without using my fingers.
No response for a few seconds as more glasses clinked in the background.
“You pour the geezers another round?”
“That’s the only way they’ll keep quiet.”
“So what was this case about?”
“Glad you asked. Basically, this twenty-three-year-old man was convicted of raping a fellow college classmate. The prosecution based their case on previous encounters between the accused and the victim, as well as eyewitness testimony.”
“Had he threatened her before?”
“From the way Fischer described the evidence he was reviewing, the accused had apparently started off trying to ask her out for a date. When she said no, his overtures became more aggressive. Once at a party, he got drunk and became handsy with her. Two other guys pulled him off her and tossed him outside the frat house. Apparently, during the initial trial, when the victim was asked by the defense if she felt like he was a real threat at that time, she said no.”
“Hmm. I bet the defense jumped all over her answer, accusing her of retribution against him possibly, or just emphasizing that she didn’t believe he was a threat.”
“From what he says, the defense may not have taken full advantage of its opportunities. Hold on a quick second,” she said. “Jesus, guys, usually you nurse one drink for hours because you’re so damn cheap. Now, just because you’re in our office, you’re extra needy.”
Obviously, the two-job situation was at an all-time low point for Alisa, and I felt badly for her.
“Does Booker drive a car just like this one here?” I heard an old coot ask. He must have spotted the cheesy, framed red Ferrari poster hanging on the wall, the TV character Magnum sitting behind the wheel.
Then the other one chimed in. “Just because Booker is a PI doesn’t mean he drives a fancy red sports car, dumbass. I would guess the only thing Booker and Magnum have in common is they’re both chick magnets. Comes with the territory of being a suave PI.” They both laughed, but I could only imagine Alisa’s hardened expression.
“Put a lid on it, guys,” she said.
Unable to find anything to open the desk drawers, I stood back up and crossed my arms, and let my sights take in the whole room from this angle. At the same time, my mind couldn’t stop processing the case Judge Fischer had written about in his memoir.
“Sorry…again,” she said, a bit exasperated.
“You mentioned eyewitness testimony. What about her? I’m assuming she ID’d him.”
“Another piece of evidence that Fischer brings up in his memoir. She initially said she couldn’t describe the man. Said it was completely dark in her bedroom. Then later, once she lawyered up, she changed her tune a bit, then picked him out of a lineup.”
“But if she already knew this guy, and had a vendetta against him, she could then nail him for the crime.”
“Fischer doesn’t say it that bluntly, but he does allude to that reasoning
,” Alisa said.
“But, frankly, all of these cases can be pretty easily decided by science. They did find DNA, right?” I asked, on the verge of pulling open the drawers with my hands. Wait, could I use the barrel of my Sig?
“She took a shower just after the attack. So, no DNA.”
“Did the defense say that no DNA meant that the accused couldn’t be convicted beyond a reasonable doubt?”
“Not exactly.”
“More intrigue. Who was running this defense, Better Call Saul?”
“There’s more.”
“I like how you’re building this up.”
She ignored my sarcasm. “During the appeal, the new defense team for the accused pointed out a number of these items. They used the DNA argument, the fact she changed her story about describing the person who assaulted her, and then there was the lynchpin of the original prosecutor’s case.”
“Don’t tell me, the eyewitness testimony.”
“How did you know?”
“Simple logic. There’s not much left to the case. What came out during the appeal?”
“The defense conducted new interviews. And the one eyewitness, who originally said he saw the man eventually convicted running from the back of the girl’s apartment, finally admitted that he was intoxicated—as in, he had a six pack of Budweiser and four shots of Tequila all in the previous hour.”
“Shit-faced,” I said.
“Exactly. The quote the judge has in his memoir was, ‘He couldn’t tell if he had two hands or four, let alone identify a man from almost a hundred feet away with very little lighting in the middle of the night.’”
“Must have been a court-appointed defense attorney…in the original case.”
“Yep. The accused had worked as a janitor at the university, but essentially had no money and no family in his life that cared.”
“Okay. Sounds like a pretty easy case to overturn, by the accounts written by Fischer.” I pulled the top drawer open and found used drug pipes, a lighter, and three pens. I moved down to the middle drawer.
“That was Fischer’s torment. He says it was one of the more egregious cases of, as he states, ‘ineffective assistance of counsel.’”
“I feel like you’re teasing me…well, you know, in a storytelling way,” I said.
“Funny,” she said. “Fischer writes that while the perp had a prior record, writing bad checks, breaking and entering, those crimes were nonviolent, didn’t physically hurt any person.”
“There must be a hook in here somewhere.”
“That’s the thing. The evidence was black and white. But the judge said he had the strangest feeling about the man accused. He writes, ‘He had that look. His eyes seared holes into me like no other man or woman that had stood in my courtroom. I saw evil. I felt evil. Like never before. I reexamined the case a hundred times, delaying my final decision on five separate occasions, because I just could not overturn his conviction. There had to be more evidence to solidify his conviction. The prosecution could not have gotten this one wrong.’”
She paused for a second.
“Serving up another drink?”
“Yeah, for me. This crap is making me tense,” she said.
“How did the judge rule?”
“As he states here, ‘Eventually, I had no choice. I had to rule to overturn the conviction. It still eats at me today.’”
“Damn.” I thought how the girl and her family might have felt when Fischer announced his decision. “Did he mention anything else about the case?”
“Said the accused was charged with beating up his girlfriend a year later. He had regret, but the law is the law.”
A thought hit me as I slid open the final drawer. I shifted the angle of my flashlight and leaned in closer.
“Booker, you there?”
A zap of electricity shot up my spine, exploding at the base of my skull.
“AKA…or die trying,” I said to myself.
“What…what are you saying, Booker?”
I wanted to touch the letters painted into the desk drawer.
“Booker, are you alone? Is everything okay?”
“Alisa, this case you just described. We need to find out more about the girl’s family.”
“Are you crazy? They don’t release the victim’s name in rape cases. It’s sealed.”
“They have to unseal it. Try Henry first. If he can’t do anything, he needs to call the chief, followed one minute later by the US Attorney. We can’t fuck around with this.”
“I’m on it.”
“We’ve been looking at this all wrong. Don’t look for a connection between the victims. Just look for any cases they worked similar to what you described, where they helped vindicate the accused.”
I raced out the door of the old, creepy church, feeling Paco’s spirit had just helped me find that ever-elusive thread to hunt down the killer.
18
From a huddled position just behind the detached garage, the man could see the neighbor’s backyard, where a yellow spotlight illuminated the light mist. As he looked into the dark sky, the mist drifted aimlessly, as if it had no direction or purpose.
But he knew his purpose was perfectly clear.
He could feel the moisture coat his face with a thin film. He wiped it clean and scanned the entire area. It was as quiet as church on a Sunday morning. Within thirty-six hours, Sunday morning church services would be replaced with people mourning the loss of another “good cop,” who owned the home behind which he was lurking. Even with a fall chill in the moist air, he could feel a satisfying warmth wash across his frame.
He blew into his hands while eyeing the lone kitchen window. Just then, a dark outline of a person walked past a set of thin, floral curtains. He saw a full head of hair pass back and forth, but no sign of the man from earlier. The owner’s boyfriend had indeed left for the night. It was just a matter of time before she made her nightly trek to bring the kitchen trash out to the garbage cans positioned just behind where he was sitting.
He had nowhere to be. He could wait as long as needed. The fulfillment of snuffing out another person’s life had given him a high like he’d never experienced. But he still didn’t consider himself a killer—at least not in the traditional sense, where a person’s motivation is usually driven by a self-centered attitude.
He’d never shown any violent tendencies during his twenty-seven years, but once he found that greater purpose, killing took on a completely different meaning in his life.
He realized that people died every day in Dallas, whether from natural causes or more tragic means, like an unexpected car crash. None of those deaths could claim the significance of the event being carried out by him and his small band of colleagues. By gaining retribution against those soulless individuals who had circumvented the system to free guilty felons, they had highlighted the injustice that was carried out every day, not just in Dallas, but in every small town and big city in the country.
It was pure brilliance.
Even with his own sarcastic and, at times, immature attitude, he knew he owed Captain America a great deal. And not just for the vengeance he’d attained when he smashed the brains out of Judge Richard Fischer.
Captain America had lived up to the symbolism usually associated with his handle. CA had helped the man and Black Widow understand the importance of what they could accomplish if they could see opportunity where they’d only previously felt heartache and bitter frustration. That clairvoyance was the dawn of his new life.
He knew he was now carrying the torch for more than just his sister. There was an entire community of people who’d watched the system buckle to the pressure asserted by a few, demented souls, cops and judges mostly, who might as well have pulled the trigger, or in his case, raped his sister.
Just then, the man heard the crank of a deadbolt unlocking. His heart doubled its pace in the blink of an eye. The sheer joy of righting a wrong—another wrong in this filthy moat of the so-called justice system�
��was just moments away. His blood struggled to move beyond his cramped knees, and he began to feel his feet tingle.
“Why, Thom, you naughty boy. You can’t say things like that to me, not over the phone,” the woman said as she exited the home.
He heard Eva giggle as her slippers shuffled down two concrete steps, as cans clanged together inside the bag of trash she was holding.
The man’s internal body temperature started to soar, and he began to fidget as the anticipation became nearly uncontrollable. His fingers coiled around the Condor Kukri machete, a combination blade and jungle machete that he’d purchased earlier that day. Once he heard Black Widow describe the euphoria she’d felt when she stabbed that bitch cop over and over again, he began to envision a similar killing scene. But his would be far more dramatic and ghastly. His would elicit another cry from the public, one that would finally shine a light on the inequality that had plagued this modern society for years.
Eventually, his name would come out, as would the others. But before then, they would leave a mark on society that no one had seen since the Constitution was written over two hundred years earlier.
Suddenly, he realized he’d been lost in his own thoughts, as silence enveloped the backyard. Had the cop with the curvaceous figure heard him moving around? He shook it off. He had the perfect plan, to rid the planet of another maggot, to stand up for the victim of this woman’s cousin, and to focus the world’s attention on their cause.
Another shuffle of a slipper.
“Well, I kind of like it when you do…you know, that thing,” Eva said from around the corner of the garage.
The man emptied his lungs, as relief flooded his veins. His plan was still intact. But, dammit, what the hell was she waiting on?
“Thom, really, I’m not sure what to say.”
Were they having a moment?
“Ugh. You’re making it so tough on me to say no.” Eva released another giggle, but this one went on and on.
Is this bitch with a badge nothing more than an annoying sixteen-year-old bimbo?
“Do you know I’m actually standing in a light rain talking to you outside? That’s just not me. I’m not usually this, uh…carefree. I’m the bulldog in our relationship. At least I thought I was. I guess you’ve softened me up,” she said. “And yes, that’s a good thing. Some would say it’s been long overdue.”
BOOKER Box Set #2 (A Private Investigator Thriller Series of Crime and Suspense): Volumes 4-6 Page 69
