DB01 - Presumption of Innocence

by Stephen Penner

  Faust frowned. “Same case?”

  “Yeah,” Brunelle nodded and took a sip from whatever number beer he was on. “But no worries. It’ll work out.”

  Faust nodded too, but a far more thoughtful one than Brunelle could muster. “Okay, Mr. Prosecutor. If you say so.” She thought for a few more seconds. “You gonna be here for a while still?”

  Brunelle looked up. He had been thinking about leaving. “Sure. Why?”

  That full-lipped smile returned. “I get off at two.”

  ***

  Two o’clock in the morning was an ungodly hour anytime. But on a Tuesday night—or Wednesday morning—it was even worse. Brunelle killed the six hours until Faust got off work by drinking too much and eating too little. He was drunk, and it kind of pissed him off. He didn’t like getting drunk. He wasn’t in control when he got drunk.

  “Still here?” Faust purred as she stepped up to his table, her purse over her shoulder, ready to leave. “Good. Wanna walk a girl home?”

  Brunelle pushed himself to his feet. “I assure you, madam, I am in no condition to walk.”

  Faust laughed. “We’ll see what you’re too drunk to do. C’mon, old man.”

  Brunelle considered making the old ‘I resemble that remark joke’ but stopped himself. Maybe he wasn’t too drunk after all.

  ***

  Faust only lived a few blocks from Darkness in a small set of apartments over some independent clothes boutiques. It looked nice enough from the outside. Brunelle was dying to know what it looked like from the inside.

  As if reading his thoughts, Faust stopped on the steps to the lobby, keys in hand. “You’re not coming up, lover boy,” she said. “That’s not why I asked you to walk me home.”

  Brunelle tried to hide his disappointment. “I figured as much,” he lied. “So why did you ask? Just wanted to see if I’d say yes?”

  Faust shook her head. That smile she usually kept tucked away in the corners of her mouth was nowhere to be seen. “I wanted to tell you something, but I couldn’t tell you in the bar.”

  Brunelle smiled. At least the night wouldn’t be a total loss.

  “Hey!” a man yelled at them before Brunelle could ask Faust what she had to say. “Why you talking to her?”

  “Oh shit,” Faust said, scrambling to put her keys in the door. “You better get out of here.”

  Brunelle’s head was still a bit fuzzy, but he could tell Faust was right. And if he hadn’t been sure, the two other guys who stepped out of the shadows as Faust disappeared inside her apartment building made it crystal clear.

  “You’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, suit,” one of them said.

  “And with the wrong girl,” the original one added.

  Brunelle grimaced. He knew he was about to get his ass beat.

  Chapter 21

  “Oh my God!” Yamata stopped short in Brunelle’s office doorway. “What the hell happened to you?”

  Brunelle tried to smile, but his black eye, swollen cheek, and split lip made the expression rather painful. “I fell,” he joked.

  “Yeah, and he’ll never do it again,” Yamata understood the reference to recanting victims. She came in and sat down. “Seriously, though, what happened?”

  Brunelle ran a hand through his hair. “Okay, it’s kind of a long story, but basically I got jumped by a bunch of guys last night who took offense to my suit.”

  Yamata nodded, smoothing out the fabric of her own expensive garments. “I don’t like your suits either,” she deadpanned. “But I wouldn’t kick your ass over it.”

  When Brunelle just stared at her through puffy eyes, she raised her fists into some martial arts pose he didn’t recognize. “I could, but I wouldn’t.”

  “I’m sure,” grumbled Brunelle. “But anyway, that’s the short version.”

  “What’s the long version?”

  “I was in the wrong neighborhood at two in the morning with the wrong girl. Some gang took offense to an old man in a suit being there. They roughed me up and told me not to come back.”

  Yamata considered the information. “Wrong girl, huh?”

  Brunelle shut his eyes with a wince. “That’s what you focus on?”

  Yamata laughed. “That’s the most interesting part. Did you call the police?”

  Brunelle shook his head. “No,” he laughed. “It was humiliating enough. I don’t need Larry Chen coming out to laugh at me.”

  Yamata frowned. “First, they wouldn’t send a detective for a simple assault. And second, he wouldn’t have laughed at you.”

  “You just did,” Brunelle pointed out.

  Yamata smiled. “Okay, yeah, he would have laughed at you.”

  Just then, Brunelle’s secretary walked in with some papers. “These were just delivered to the front desk. They’re on the Karpati case.”

  Brunelle started to read the pleadings as Yamata picked up his phone and dialed. He was curious what she was doing, but was more concerned about the motion Welles had filed.

  Or motions.

  ‘Motion to Dismiss for Governmental Misconduct; Motion to Dismiss Aggravating Factors; Motion to Disclose Identity of Confidential Informant; Motion for Release on Bail.’

  The attached briefing was an inch thick. Brunelle wouldn’t have been looking forward to reading it even if it hadn’t been a diatribe on his own unethical misconduct, which he was sure it was.

  The sound of Yamata hanging up his phone shook him from the pages.

  “I called Chen,” she explained. “You better talk to him.”

  Chapter 22

  “Vampires?” Brunelle couldn’t believe what Chen had just said. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “Well, they’re not real vampires,” Chen defended. He offered Yamata a ‘how dumb can you be?’ glance. “They just claim to be.”

  Brunelle pushed back in his chair. “I get that, Larry. Thanks. But how is it, given our upside-down, vampire wanna-be murder, that you haven’t mentioned this particular street gang before? What do they call themselves again?”

  “The No-Bloods,” Chen answered.

  “Cute,” Yamata said. She was standing by the door, arms crossed. “Are their rivals the ‘Not-Crips’?”

  “Naw,” Chen shrugged. “They’re not part of the real gang scene. They’re just some kids who like to play dress up.”

  “Is that why you didn’t mention them before?” Brunelle asked.

  “Yeah,” replied Chen. “That, and they hadn’t beaten your ass before.”

  “You think it’s connected?” Yamata asked.

  “No,” Chen laughed. “I think Davey was in the wrong part of town chasing the wrong piece of tail.”

  Brunelle was surprised until Yamata explained, “I told him about the ‘wrong girl’ thing you said.”

  Brunelle nodded and put his head in his hand.

  “Well, it’s worth pursuing, don’t you think?” he asked. “A pseudo-vampire gang that hangs out near the bar where Karpati met Holly?”

  Chen frowned and nodded. “Sure. Why not?” Then he stood up and stepped toward the door. “I’m gonna run down to my office. I’ll be right back.”

  When he returned he had a thin manila folder with some mug shots. “These are the ones we think are in the gang. Think you might recognize them?”

  Brunelle shrugged. “Maybe. But shouldn’t we do this the right way? With a photomontage and an admonition form first?”

  Chen started to agree but Yamata cut him off. “No. Go ahead and ID them, but if this is related in any way to Karpati, you can’t prosecute the assault.”

  “Why not?” Brunelle asked just before Chen did.

  “Because then you’d be a witness,” Yamata explained. “And you’d get taken off the case. No way I’m trying this without you.”

  Brunelle frowned and pushed back in his chair again. It made his back twinge where they’d kidney-punched him. “Good point.”

  “Well, you can still ID them,” Chen suggested. “Then I’ll go
harass them. I’m sure they’ve committed some crime I can arrest them for.”

  “If not, plant something on them,” Brunelle joked.

  “Shh!” Chen pointed at Yamata. “Not in front of the newbie.”

  ***

  When they got back to the courthouse, Yamata went straight to her office to do some research Brunelle had insisted—over her objections—that she do, and that she keep quiet about. His mind was pulling together the pieces of the murder, the assault on him, and Welles’ brief. His thoughts were immersed in the solution he was considering, so he was genuinely startled when he walked into his office to find Kat Anderson leaning against his desk.

  “Kat!” He shook the thoughts from his head. “What are you doing here?”

  Then he realized, and tried avoiding the coming storm. “Done already with your autopsies for the day?”

  Kat offered a large and cold smile. “Slow day at the morgue, Mr. Brunelle,” she said. “But that’s okay, because I’m about to kill you.”

  Chapter 23

  “I can explain,” Brunelle started. He used his calm voice, which was probably a mistake, and held his hands out, which ended up being a good move when Kat picked up his coffee mug and threw it at him.

  “Don’t pull that lawyer-crap on me, David! I know exactly what happened.”

  Brunelle nodded and frowned. He’d just expected Lizzy to keep quiet, so he didn’t explicitly ask her to. Mistake, apparently. “What did she tell you?”

  Kat picked up his stapler and threw that at him too. “I said no lawyer bullshit, David. Don’t pull this ‘what did she tell you’ crap, trying to figure out what I know. You tell me. You tell me what happened, what you did to put my only child’s life in danger.”

  Brunelle grimaced. He hadn’t really thought of it that way.

  “She wanted to do it,” he protested. “In fact, she called me.”

  Kat eyed the tape dispenser next, but instead set her jaw and met Brunelle’s gaze with force. “Of course she did, you jack-ass. You showed her attention. Her own fucking father doesn’t call except on Christmas, and even then it’s at the end of the day. He sends a belated birthday card every year too, but that’s it. Then some handsome adult male father-figure comes into her life and she’s already planning our wedding. By the time she picked up the phone, you were practically her step-father in her mind.”

  Brunelle grinned. “Handsome?”

  The tape-dispenser flew past his head.

  “Don’t joke about this, David. Not this.”

  Before he could reply, there was a light knock on his office door. “Is everything okay in there?”

  It was his secretary. “Yes, Danielle,” Brunelle answered through the door. “Everything’s fine.”

  The lack of response suggested the legal assistant had accepted his assurance.

  “Sorry.” Brunelle turned his attention back to Kat. “Where were we?”

  She crossed her arms and glowered at him. “You were about to explain how you’ve endangered the life of my baby.”

  Brunelle nodded. “Right. Well, see, this is what we did…”

  He explained it all. From his initial idea, to his phone call with Lizzy, through working out the logistics with the jail, and making sure word didn’t get out to Welles or Edwards. And he made sure to emphasize what a good job Lizzy did.

  Kat shook her head. “That damn girl is such a performer.”

  “She’s got a future as a detective too,” Brunelle added. “She’s got great instincts.”

  Kat smiled. “She’s got tight lips too. Never breathed a word of it to me.”

  Brunelle’s jaw dropped. “What? But you said—”

  “I said nothing, dear lawyer,” Kat grinned. “I told you to tell me what happen and you did.” Then she couldn’t suppress a laugh. “You big dummy.”

  Brunelle wanted to be angry at being tricked, but that thick black hair and those twinkling eyes wouldn’t let him. “Well done, counselor,” he said instead. “So how did you even know?”

  “All over the news,” Kat replied. “Welles filed a motion to dismiss the case because you used an unidentified teenage girl to trick his client into making inculpatory statements.”

  “They weren’t that inculpatory,” Brunelle shook his head.

  “Focus, lawyer boy,” Kat responded. “You used a teenage girl to trick him three days after you learn about Odette and Odile from my daughter. Didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure that one out.”

  “Just a medical examiner,” Brunelle joked.

  “We’re smarter than brain surgeons anyway,” Kat replied. “I’ve cut up plenty of brains in my day.”

  “I’m sure you have,” Brunelle answered. “Although making sure they still worked wasn’t really a concern.”

  “Details,” Kat waved away Brunelle’s comment. She sat on the edge of his desk and picked up his letter opener, testing its weight in her hand. Brunelle felt the urge to duck.

  “But you know what really bothers me?” she asked. She didn’t wait for a reply. “You lied to me, David. You promised me you wouldn’t do it, and you did it anyway. You lied to me.”

  Brunelle waited for the letter opener to fly at him, but it remained distant, but ready, in Kat’s steady hand. He decided to choose his words carefully.

  “I didn’t lie to you, Kat. I meant it. I wasn’t going to do it at all until Lizzy called me. Then I thought back on our conversation. What I promised was to not put a wire on her. And we didn’t. We used the jail’s surveillance equipment.”

  Kat looked him square in the eye. “Are you fucking kidding me? You’re going to split hairs like that? I basically have a knife in my hand. It’s dull, but that’s just gonna make it hurt more.”

  She started to stand up.

  “It’s not an insignificant difference,” Brunelle insisted. “If we’d done a wire, we would have needed a warrant and I would have had to identify Lizzy in the warrant application. But as it is, I can keep her identity secret.”

  Kat paused, letter opener still at the ready. “Her identity is secret?”

  Brunelle sighed. “Well, yes. Of course. I’m not that stupid. She’s identified in the reports as confidential informant #7. And that just means she was the seventh C.I. Chen used so far this year.”

  Kat narrowed her eyes. “But you can’t keep it secret forever. She’s going to have to testify, right?”

  Brunelle shook his head. “No. This was never about getting a confession for trial. I can’t send a C.I. in to talk to someone who’s invoked his right to an attorney. Not and use the information for his trial anyway. No, this is about shoring up a weak case so the judge doesn’t dismiss it.”

  Kat’s narrowed eyes were joined by a doubtful frown. She pointed the letter opener at Brunelle. “Explain.”

  “Welles was going to file a motion to dismiss anyway,” Brunelle answered. “Our case is paper thin. It’s just and righteous, but paper thin. We can’t call Holly and we don’t have any other witnesses. But now Karpati has admitted to the murder—or at least to telling Holly to knock on the door. That’s not going to convict him at trial, but it should keep the judge from throwing it out, now that she has confirmation, even through inadmissible evidence, that Karpati did it. Hopefully she’ll let the jury acquit instead of tossing it out pre-trial. She doesn’t want to be the judge who let the kid-killer out. Not in an election year.”

  “But if the evidence is inadmissible, how does the judge even know about it?”

  Brunelle smiled broadly. “Because Welles put it in his brief.”

  Chapter 24

  “Welles’ brief is mostly bullshit,” Yamata opined from a cross-legged slouch across from Brunelle’s desk. He tried not to look up her skirt. “We don’t have to reveal the C.I.‘s identity if we’re not going to use her.”

  “And we’re not,” Brunelle confirmed, being sure to address his co-counsel’s face.

  “We can’t,” Yamata corrected. “Not in this trial anyway. If you charge
him with attempted witness tampering, then you’ll have to, but not as it stands now.”

  Brunelle nodded. He’d pretty much figured that out already. “You said ‘mostly’ bullshit. What’s not bullshit?”

  Yamata leaned forward. She didn’t uncross her shapely legs, but now her chest was competing for Brunelle’s attention. He almost wished Duncan had assigned that irritating guy Peters to co-chair. But not quite.

  “The motion to dismiss the aggravators is strong. He has affidavits from three doctors that the method of killing in this case doesn’t rise to the level of torture. And he’s calling bullshit on your burglary based on the homicide aggravator.”

  “You don’t like that, huh?” Brunelle asked.

  “No. It’s weak. Weaker than weak. And the judge is going to dump it.”

  Brunelle chewed his cheek for a moment. “You’re right, she is. What about the torture one?”

  Yamata shrugged. “It’s fifty-fifty, I’d say. Now you’re talking about a factual determination: how much did she suffer? Not a legal question about whether a murder can be aggravated by itself. The judge is going to be more open to keeping that one alive, but it may be hard if he’s got three docs who will all say she didn’t really suffer, not more than any other murder victim anyway.”

  Brunelle nodded.

  “Do we have any docs who could testify she did?” Yamata asked.

  “No,” answered Brunelle.

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” Brunelle frowned, “she didn’t.”

  ***

  Brunelle pushed back in his chair. His reply brief was done. He wasn’t going to make Yamata write this one. She was good, too good to write what needed to be written in that brief. The set up for the other pleading he drafted.

  He knew he was going to lose the aggravators. If he just let that happen, Karpati’s sentence would drop from death or life without parole to twenty years. Still a lot, but not enough. The bastard was young. He’d be out of prison before he reached Brunelle’s age. That wasn’t acceptable.

  It was well past the end of the day. Everyone else had gone home hours ago, including the legal assistants who sat near the printer where his documents usually printed. He pulled open his reply brief and his other document. He’d file the reply in the morning. The other one would stay inside the file until the hearing. He hoped he wouldn’t have to file it. He really hoped that.