Hard Bitten

by M. K. York

  “I do not need you to tell me what is permitted, Counselor.”

  “Yes, Your Honor.” Lena raised her eyebrows as she turned away from him, toward the jury. “No further questions for this witness. Thank you, Detective.”

  “Redirect, Your Honor.”

  “Go ahead, Counselor.”

  Dauer stepped up. “Detective Garisch, would you like to explain why you didn’t think it was necessary to further investigate Mr. Williams’s alibi?”

  “Well, sir, we were at that point in the investigation confident that the murder had been committed due to the victim’s infidelity. In that light, the obvious suspects were his wife or his mistress. We did not feel that Mr. Williams had any evident motive for wishing harm to the victim, and his housekeeper has no record that would make her word questionable. Neither does Mr. Williams, for that matter.”

  “Thank you. No further questions.”

  The big question after that was whether they were going to get started on Ron Williams himself—apparently sitting out in the hall, cooling his heels all damn day—but after some murmured conversation, there was a decision to go into recess until the next morning.

  “That detective is shifty as hell,” said Lena shortly as they went over their strategy for the next day. “You think he’s one of the dirty ones?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know the police force well enough to know who to expect to be dirty.”

  “Christ! If we had any information on the IA investigation, we’d be in better shape to go after these motherfuckers.” She took a vicious slug of her cold decaf. “Well, fuck it. We can expect Ron Williams to go on the stand tomorrow, and my guess is he’ll take longer than he should. He seems like somebody who needs to make sure everyone knows how important he is. He’s going to expect the cross-examination to be a real bitch, and I’m going to do it, so they think we won’t call him for when we get to our end of the list, but I’m going to leave that for you. Think you’re prepared for it?”

  “Yes.” Mark could feel the grinding fear in his stomach every time he thought about the plan, but this was his chance. He’d pushed to have it. He couldn’t toss it away now.

  When he got home that night, he texted Lukas. RW on the stand tomorrow, might begin our case. Can you be there?

  yeah no worries

  How are you doing?

  not bad, you?

  He just texted back a string of ghost emoji.

  Lukas said, hah, love it.

  You would. I’m freaking OUT here

  relax and nail that bastard

  I’m trying!

  It did make him feel better, even though Lukas never responded to that.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Lukas found the experience of walking into the courthouse unnerving, every time. It was mostly the metal detector. The knowledge that not only was he being scanned for weapons, but that this was necessary given the general clientele of the courthouse, was deeply unsettling. His own gun stayed at home, in a lockbox, no matter what. He only had it because it had been a gift from his father, for Christ’s sake, and his dad would be furious if he got rid of it.

  But there were people who were walking in looking like they’d probably left their knives and their firearms in their cars outside, and it got to him as he put his wallet and keys into the tray. Beep, said the detector. Shit, his belt—he took it off, ran that through the machine, and then he was on the other side.

  He was gathering his things when Mark came through the attorney-only lane, nodding and waving to the security guards.

  “Hey,” Lukas said, surprising himself with how scratchy his voice was. He cleared his throat. “Ready for today?”

  “Jesus Christ, is anyone?” Mark sighed, swiping a hand over his mouth. He looked pale. “Lena’s handling most of the cross today, but once we get started on our own witnesses—and sorry, but that could be you today, or it could be tomorrow—I’m going to take on some of the questioning. I kind of want to puke.”

  “You’ve done trials before, though.” They fell into step.

  “Yeah, for misdemeanors! This is a way bigger deal!” Mark was keeping his voice low, and his face was fairly calm, but he was hissing in clear agitation.

  “You’re going to go in and do what you and Lena talked about. I’m sure you’ve practiced, right?”

  “Only every shower I’ve had for the last six weeks,” Mark muttered, pausing to check the monitors that showed the room assignments.

  “See, there you go. Pretend you’re talking to your soap.”

  Mark actually laughed at that, even though he still looked deadly pale. “Christ. Okay. Sorry you’re waiting in the hall all day.”

  “It’s cool, I brought my laptop and there’s Wi-Fi. I’ll just get some work done. There’s outlets, right?” Lukas made a face. “Please tell me there’s outlets.”

  “Yeah, yeah, there’s a couple. You, uh, might have to fight someone for them.”

  “As long as they’re not bigger than me I think I’m good.”

  Mark’s faint laugh echoed off the marble around them. “Different selection of people here than you’re used to, I think. Some of them might be bigger than you and a lot more tattooed.”

  “I’ll be careful, promise.”

  “Yeah.” Mark looked distracted. “Yeah.”

  Lukas took a risk, and in the bustle of pushing toward the courtroom, let his fingers graze the back of Mark’s hand—a split-second gesture, but unmistakable, intentional.

  Mark sighed almost inaudibly. “Thanks,” he murmured.

  “Crush it.”

  Mark rolled his eyes and smirked at him as he pushed past. Lukas found a spot to sit—with an outlet, thank God—and settled in to work on some reports for clients, who weren’t going to be happy. People didn’t hire a PI to be happy with the outcome.

  *

  Ron Williams took the stand the same way he took everything: like it belonged to him. He sat there, smug as a king. He thought he was smarter than everyone he was talking to, that much was clear, with a certain beaming warm condescension. It was particularly ludicrous when the person doing the talking was John Dauer. Dauer hadn’t made DA by being a chump, but Williams talked to Dauer like Mark had to imagine he’d talk to a particularly thick-skulled truck driver.

  Dauer didn’t let it bother him, obviously. He was a professional. He’d had worse witnesses. The prosecution knew what they were there for, and Dauer would get it from Williams, one syrupy-sweet question-and-answer at a time.

  It took, really, an unduly long time. Dauer went into the organizational structure of the company at some length, which was a little weird. Mark scribbled on the legal pad, deliberately sloppy writing that would be hard to decipher at a distance, why this?

  I have an idea, Lena replied. Ask me after.

  Kline was looking bored, too, by the time Dauer moved on to the relationships among the employees. Yes, Gina had worked for him for quite some time. Gina had directly reported to Greg. Gina was unstable, she’d always been a bit of a loose cannon, she’d been clearly very emotional about Greg, Greg had confided in Williams that he’d been planning to end things with Gina, planning to go back to Melinda and try to make things work.

  It took the better part of the morning to get through everything the prosecution had to ask Ron Williams. They took a recess for lunch, and Lena jerked her head meaningfully at Mark to follow her. On the way out of the courtroom, he caught a glimpse of Lukas, and he found his head twisting to get a better look even as Lena led him away—their eyes met for a second, and Lukas gave him a half smile.

  “I think it’s for us,” she said flatly as she punched the number code into the vending machine for a wilted-looking sandwich. “I think he’s setting it up for us.”

  “What? Why?” Even as he asked, Mark realized he knew and slapped his own forehead. “Because I was right and this is a trap.”

  “Yeah.” Lena banged the plastic flap open to retrieve her sandwich. “It makes things more
complicated.”

  Mark, on autopilot, put in a couple of dollar bills and got a PB&J. “Because it can’t just make it easier, can it? He’s got to walk the line. Set it up for us but he can’t make it too obvious. And we can’t let on we know.”

  “That’s about right.”

  “So are you going to work that in to your cross today, or do you want me to bring it up on recall?” With the thorough description Williams had ended up giving, it would be fairly easy to demonstrate that he could have run a drug operation with Kupfer’s help, and that it would have been extremely difficult for Kupfer to rig the books in such a way as to keep Williams blind to it.

  “Recall.” Lena sighed heavily, staring down at her less than appetizing sandwich, half-unwrapped in her hand. “We can’t afford to tip him off to what’s going on before we’re ready.”

  “I was thinking your cross on alibi might have already done that.”

  “Maybe that we’re mooting him as the most likely suspect, especially since we’ve got the ex-wife on the witness list, but I don’t want him to realize that we know about the drugs until it’s time.”

  “Are you still sure you want me to do the recall?”

  “Yeah. It’ll keep Kline off guard too. He won’t figure we’d put you up for this if it were significant, and I’d bet money he’s coached Williams on what to expect.”

  “Okay. Great. No pressure. Jesus.” Mark took a bite of his sandwich, but it was hard to chew with his mouth dry of spit.

  Lena patted him briskly on the shoulder. “You’ll do fine. I didn’t have to bring you on to this case. I did it because you’ve got potential.”

  “Yeah, great,” said Mark weakly.

  “Look, we need to talk about the line of questioning for the afternoon. We knew the later interviews with the detectives don’t line up with the early interviews with us and with the cops. Now we know how committed he is, and Dauer didn’t get into the inconsistencies. That’s going to be our job.”

  “Okay.” He followed her to sit in a spare conference room, spreading out their notes and the files, finding and flagging what they were going to need.

  *

  Lena had a bright, friendly look on her face. “Mr. Williams, would you like to discuss what you told our investigator at the initial interview? It differs in some fairly substantial ways from the testimony you gave us this morning.”

  Williams shifted uncomfortably. “I’d be happy to. I don’t remember exactly what I said. That was right after the murder, and I was still pretty shaken.”

  “If you’d be so kind as to read from this exhibit. It’s the investigator’s report. Please let us know if it’s incorrect in any particular.” She handed him a sheet of paper with his comments highlighted. He cleared his throat and started reading.

  When he finished, she leaned casually against the rail. “Are there any inconsistencies between what’s in that report and what you remember telling the investigator?”

  “No. But like I said, I don’t remember much of what I said.”

  “Because in that interview, you noted that you weren’t certain whether Gina and Greg were having an affair.”

  “I might not have wanted to tell the investigator. To protect Greg’s memory.”

  “Despite knowing that Gina was emotionally involved? You said at that time that you couldn’t envision Gina as having committed a deliberate murder. Has that changed, or were you deliberately misleading the investigator at that time?”

  “I don’t—I wasn’t deliberately misleading—”

  “Because either you were misleading the investigator at that time, or you are deliberately misleading the court now. Which is it, Mr. Williams?”

  Williams was starting to flush, a beefy red creeping up his face. “Neither. I just—I might not have wanted to say every little thing on my mind back then. Greg was dead, I didn’t think it would matter.”

  “Didn’t think which would matter? The affair? Whether Gina was capable of cold-blooded murder? Both of those things seem pretty relevant.” She managed to sound dispassionate, just mildly surprised. Mark darted a glance at Dauer; Dauer’s face was set and cold, staring at Williams.

  “I wasn’t thinking clearly. A close personal friend was dead.”

  “Is it true, as you’ve testified today, that Greg told you not only that he was having an affair with Gina, but that he was planning to end it?”

  “Yes.”

  “That does seem consistent with him having been a close personal friend. Again, why didn’t you tell the investigator any of this during your initial interview?”

  “I didn’t want to make Greg look bad.”

  “So you gave intentionally inconsistent information?”

  “I suppose I did, but it was to protect my friend.”

  “But did you believe at that time that he had been murdered? You told the investigator that you felt it was more likely he’d started an accidental fire. You proposed that Greg might have started the fire while smoking.”

  “I wasn’t sure.”

  “I see.” Lena raised her eyebrows. “You were uncertain whether your friend was murdered or not, despite the information that you had at your disposal that you later felt was relevant, and so you attempted to protect his reputation from the widespread disclosure that he was involved in a sexual relationship with the woman who had at that point already been arrested for his murder? Were you under the impression that the information about the affair would not become public knowledge?”

  “I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

  “And yet you strike me as a man who has a long history of needing to think clearly. You run a business, Mr. Williams, and apparently quite successfully. Are you in the habit of panicking?”

  “No. I’m normally—I usually keep my head on straight. It was just very shocking, what happened with Greg.”

  “And yet your first interview with the police detectives wasn’t until several days after the murder, is that right?”

  “I—yes, I suppose that’s correct.”

  “So, several days after finding out that your close personal friend was dead, you were still in such an emotional state that you gave deliberately misleading information to the detectives who investigated the case, and consistent information to our investigator after that?”

  “Yes. I suppose so.”

  “You’re supposing quite a bit, Mr. Williams. Do you remember your motivations for not giving correct information?”

  “I was worried about Melinda. The news was quite a shock to her.”

  “Your concern for the widow was so great that you didn’t inform her about the affair at any previous point?”

  “I didn’t want to hurt her.”

  “Yes or no, Mr. Williams.”

  “No. I didn’t tell her.”

  “And was that out of concern for her feelings?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s difficult to understand that a successful business owner would be so thrown by his friend’s death that he would consistently give incorrect information to investigators for days afterward, information that cast the defendant in a more positive light, only to later reverse his decision and tell the truth, once the case against the defendant had proceeded.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you. It’s the truth.”

  “What is?”

  “The testimony I gave today.”

  “That’s very helpful, thank you.”

  Once Lena had finished cross-examining Williams—hammering him, absolutely hammering him, on those inconsistencies, but not going near the material they were going to have his ex-wife cover—the prosecution started dragging in their other witnesses, people who knew Gina, people who knew the Kupfers, who had bits and pieces to contribute. The main component of the prosecution’s case had been the detectives, and once that was through, it was just wrapping up the details.

  Lena gave Mark a nod to do the cross on a couple of less important witnesses. For the most part he didn’t have a lot to ask the
m—just digging at the edges.

  When they wrapped up for the day, they hadn’t gotten to the beginning of the defense case; the prosecution closed, with a lukewarm rehash of their opening statement. Lena made the usual halftime motion to dismiss based on the prosecution not having sufficiently established their case. Kline shut it down instantly and brutally, and reprimanded Lena for wasting his time. Lena took it with a granite face, and afterward she gave Mark a vanishingly small and breathtakingly venomous smile. Fuck him, Mark thought.

  Lukas was sitting on the same bench from that morning, leaning with his back against the wall, typing sporadically, headphones in.

  “I’ll catch up with you,” Mark said to Lena, who nodded and peeled off. He walked to Lukas’s bench and reached out to tap Lukas on the shoulder.

  Lukas startled, looking up, and his face broke into a smile when he saw Mark. “Hey! I guess I’m not on today.”

  “Yeah, sorry, we took longer than we could have with the prosecution’s witnesses. Tomorrow for sure, though.”

  “Good to know. Any big surprises today?”

  Mark shook his head. “Plan’s still on. We’ll see how it all goes.”

  “Okay. Where are you headed?”

  “Lena’s office. We’re going to go over the plan for tomorrow, just make sure we’re on the same page.”

  “You want me to walk you over?”

  There was no good reason for it. “Sure.”

  Lukas finished packing up his laptop and stood—Mark was briefly reminded how tall Lukas was, and then Lukas turned and said, “Lead on.” Lukas made a face at the automatic revolving doors, which were definitely kind of weird, but they made it through without incident.

  Mark took a breath of the fresh air. It was wet, almost salty, even though no rain was falling. There were flashes of sun coming through the thin clouds. “So tomorrow, we’re starting out with kind of small-fry. Character witnesses, that kind of thing. Lena wants to build up to the big stuff. We’ll do the opening statement first—or she’ll do it, I’m not presenting that—and then we’ll get the friends and coworkers up to say, you know, she’s a very caring person with a big heart who hasn’t always made perfect decisions but she wouldn’t hurt a fly, that kind of thing. And then we’ll put you on, and we’ll start off with the simple things. The interviews about the DUI, and then build up to your surveillance, and then we get into the ex-wife. We won’t ask you too much about her since we’ve got her here. We probably won’t get to her until Friday, but you’ll definitely be tomorrow.”