Trial by Blood
Page 1
Trial by Blood
Daniel Pike Series, Volume 3
WILLIAM BERNHARDT
Published by Babylon Books, 2019.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
TRIAL BY BLOOD
First edition. December 17, 2019.
Copyright © 2019 WILLIAM BERNHARDT.
ISBN: 978-1948263412
Written by WILLIAM BERNHARDT.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Praise for William Bernhardt and the Daniel Pike Novels
Identity Crisis
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
The Trouble with Knowing
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
The Beginning of Knowledge
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Epilogue
Afterword
Sneak Preview of Twisted Justice (Book 4 of the Daniel Pike Series)
Dan’s Recipes
About the Author
Also by William Bernhardt
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for Lara
again and again and again
Praise for William Bernhardt and the Daniel Pike Novels
“I could not put Trial by Blood down. The plot is riveting—with a surprise after the ending, when I thought it was all over....This book is special.”
Nikki Hanna, author of Capture Life
“Court of Killers is a wonderful second book in the Daniel Pike legal thriller series....[A] top-notch, suspenseful crime thriller.”
Timothy Hoover
“Once started, it is hard to let [The Last Chance Lawyer] go, since the characters are inviting, engaging and complicated....You will enjoy it.”
Chicago Daily Law Bulletin
“William Bernhardt writes fast-paced thrillers with lovable characters and many twists and turns. He inspires me to writer better.”
Dan Friedman, author of Don’t Dare to Dream
“Bernhardt is the undisputed master of the courtroom drama."
Library Journal
Copyright © 2020 by William Bernhardt
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
For Lara
again and again and again
Memory believes before knowing remembers.
William Faulkner, Light in August
Identity Crisis
Chapter 1
Fourteen Years Before
Ruby slid the steel-gray handgun into her beach bag, so grateful, so sure this would be the solution she and her son desperately needed. For the first time in ages, she saw a way out. Day One of a better chapter in a bitter life.
She felt a tear snaking down her cheek, but she wiped it away before the boy could see. “Do you remember your name?”
He scrunched his eyes. “Of course I do. I’m four fingers old.”
“I mean your new name.”
“Aw, that.”
“Do you remember?”
“Yeah.”
“And where you’re from? And your mama’s new name? And why we’re traveling?”
“I wanna go home.”
“We can’t, son. Ain’t safe for us.”
“Are we safe now?”
Here? In a twenty-year-old Yugo GV that barely started, barely ran, and looked like hell? Were they safe when the most powerful person she had ever known hunted them? She didn’t know what the word safe meant any more. “You just stay close to your mama. Mama gonna take care of you.”
She felt him scoot a little closer. Good. I can take care of you. I can stop the bad from coming.
“Mama, are we almost there?”
“Almost, baby boy. Almost. We’re like Moses. Mostways to the Promised Land, standing outside the gate, hopin’ someone will let us in.”
“I’m hungry.”
“I am too, son, but we gotta keep movin’. There’s people lookin’ for us and we don’t want them to drag us back where we come from.”
She slowed for a stop sign. The car choked, shuddered, then died.
She swore under her breath, hoping the boy didn’t notice. She had no time for this. She turned the key in the ignition.
Nothing happened.
She tried it again. Barely even a churning sound. She let up, not wanting to flood the engine. Hard as it was, she made herself count to thirty before she tried again.
Nothing. This sorry excuse for a car wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
“Come on.” She tugged her boy’s arm and together they slid out on the passenger side.
“Mama, I need my box.”
“We’ll come back for it later.”
“It has all my stuff. My Power Rangers and my drawing book and—”
“We’ll come back for it later.” She pulled hard on his arm. “You be a big boy. You be the man Mama needs you to be, understand? We can’t be sittin’ still. We got to move.”
She felt her heart pounding inside her chest. Her pulse raced. She had never felt so afraid in her entire life. Please, dear Lord, just give me a chance. Just one chance.
She looked both ways down the street. Her car had stalled in the worst possible place, one of the dirtiest parts of St Petersburg. Mostly industrial, with a few taco stands and massage parlors and other places she had no intention of visiting. Southside Imports had a big ugly warehouse to the north. Gossips said that was a front for drug-runners. Best to stay away. She needed someplace they could hide till she found a ride out of town.
She couldn’t afford the Tradewinds or one of those rich white-people places in the tourist district. But there were some cheap motels nearby where they could hole up. They needed to get off the street and they needed to do it fast.
He was looking for her. And she knew what he would do if he found her.
“Come on.” She jerked the boy forward, not permitting any resistance.
They had barely walked a hundred feet when she heard tires squeal. A car barreled down the road, straight toward them.
Was that him? Or someone working for him? So soon?
Nowhere to hide, no way the driver could miss them. Maybe she shouldn’t have worn this bright yellow dress, but she had few choices. Since Car
l died, she couldn’t afford to do much shopping. She knew that bastard wanted to get rid of her, to take her boy and send her somewhere she would never return from.
The car slowed as it approached...
Then turned left. She felt the air rush out of her lungs. It wasn’t him. Not him and not nobody working for him. They were safe. A little longer.
But that wouldn’t last long.
“Mama! You’re bleeding!”
She looked down, just above her waist on the right side. Sure enough, blood stained her dress from the inside out. Damn yellow. It didn’t hide anything. Looked like he’d cut her worse than she’d imagined. She told him she was taking the boy and leaving. He tried to stop her and they both got hurt. She didn’t mean to push him but he got in her way and—
He’d hated her before, but now—she didn’t even know a word for it. He would do anything to find her, stop her. Maybe kill her, just to tie up the loose ends.
Not that it mattered. He could cut off her head and she would keep moving forward. Her boy didn’t have no one, not one soul in the world he could trust, except her. She was gonna do what she should have done a long time ago.
“It’s nothing, darlin’. Just a cut. Don’t worry yourself none over it.”
In the distance, she spotted a Motel 6 sign. That would do. She could afford that, just, with the money she’d stolen from his wallet. Hole up a little while, then once the heat died down, get out of here. Leave Florida. Go someplace her boy could be the man he deserved to be, safe from the ugliness and pain she’d dealt with for so long. Just a few days and—
Another car careened around the corner behind them.
And she recognized it.
“It’s Derrick. Run, boy. Run.” She squeezed his hand and together the two raced down the asphalt. She knew she was holding the boy back. Her feet didn’t move the way they once did.
The car sped around them, then spun directly in front, blocking their path.
A second later, a wiry man covered in tattoos and wearing a torn tank top crawled out of the driver’s seat. “Where you goin’ in such a rush, Ruby?”
She stood her ground, took in a deep breath, and faked courage she did not feel. “Don’t you mess with me, Derrick. We’re leaving.”
“I know someone who doesn’t think that’s such a good idea. Especially not with the boy.”
“He’s my son. I’m the one that makes decisions ‘bout where he goes and what he does.”
“Well now, there’s a strong difference of opinion on that point.”
“We’re gonna walk down this street, Derrick. We’re gonna walk down this street and you ain’t gonna do nothin’ to stop us.”
“Not after what you did to the boss. That changed everything.” Derrick pulled a baseball bat out of the front seat of his car. “Don’t want to do this, Ruby. But I got no choice about it.”
“We all got a choice, Derrick. We decide who we are and who we wanna be. You’re making a choice right now. A bad one.”
He walked closer, swaggering and swinging the bat. “You two get in my car peaceful-like and we won’t have any problems. You know you can’t get away with this. Make it easy on yourself.”
The boy stepped forward. “You stay away from my mama!”
Derrick grinned. “What have we got here? A little hero?”
Ruby laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “He’s got more courage than you ever thought about having.”
“Courage can be a dangerous thing.” Derrick stepped closer, staring into her eyes. “Do you want your boy hurt? Hurt bad?”
“You wouldn’t do that.”
“I’ll do whatever it takes.” Before she knew what had happened, he brought his hand around and hit her hard across the face, knocking her to her knees.
She steadied herself, rubbing the side of her cheek.
The boy ran forward, screaming. Derrick knocked him to the ground with a single swat.
“You’re just making this unpleasant, Ruby. You’re both gonna end up banged up and bleeding. And you’re still goin’ back with me. Just banged up and bleeding.”
“Maybe not.” There was only one thing she could do. And if she hesitated, he might talk her out of it.
She reached into her bag and pulled out the gun.
Derrick held up his hands. “Whoa. Hold on there. Where’d you get that, Ruby?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Don’t do anything you’ll regret later.”
“I won’t. Should’ve done this months ago.” She pulled the trigger.
Derrick looked stunned, but he did not fall.
She shot him again.
Derrick crumpled to the pavement.
She put the gun back in the beach bag and did her best to remain calm. She looked every which way but didn’t see anyone. Maybe no one saw or heard. Maybe she was lucky just this once. But someone would find the body. She had to disappear before the cops arrived.
The boy looked stunned, frozen. She took his hand. “We need to get off the street.”
A few minutes later she was at the registration desk for the Motel 6. The clerk gave her a funny scowl when she offered him cash, but he took it.
“Just you and the boy?”
“Just us.”
The man was obviously suspicious, but he didn’t say anything. He slid the key across the counter with two dingy brown towels.
Two minutes later, they were in their room. Ruby sat on the edge of the bed. All at once, tears sprung from her eyes. It was like a waterfall, pent up for so long, then finally released all at once. Her whole body shook. She had been through so much. And there still was so much left to do.
“It’s okay, Mama. It’s okay.” The boy wrapped his arms around her ample frame. “We made it. We’re safe now.”
She didn’t say anything. She couldn’t. Her throat was choked and dry. But she knew they weren’t safe. She had bought them a little time, but as soon as he heard about Derrick, he would send someone else after them. Or the police would find them.
They would never make it out of town. She knew that now. Never.
She heard a rustling sound outside on the sidewalk.
There was only one way she could save her boy now.
She reached for her bag and slowly withdrew the gun.
“Mama, what are you doing?”
She raised the gun, her hand trembling. “What I have to do.”
“No, Mama!”
Tears streamed from her eyes. “I don’t wanna do it. Don’t you see that? But I have to. We’ve run out of choices.”
“You said everyone has a choice.”
She nodded, wiped her nose. “I just got the one now, boy. So I’m taking it.” She tried to concentrate, tried to stiffen her arm.
“Mama, don’t point that thing at me.”
“Don’t you see? It’s the only way. The only way left.”
“Mama!” The boy was crying and shaking, terrified.
“Goodbye, son.”
“Mama, no!”
The room was paralyzed by the crash of thunder.
Chapter 2
Present Day
Dan knew a defense lawyer’s primary goal in any trial, and especially a bench trial, was to elicit the judge’s sympathy. That was crucial—and exceptionally challenging in the present case, since his client was an alcoholic homeless man with 174 priors. The first time he saw that on the rap sheet, he thought it must be a typo, but it wasn’t. Henry Bates had been arrested on 175 occasions. This time he’d been brought in for the usual misdemeanor—disturbing the peace—but also on a felony charge—resisting arrest. Judge La Costa made it clear he’d had enough, and if the defendant were found guilty, the sentence would not be merely another night in jail. Henry would get a lengthy prison stay. One Dan knew Henry probably wouldn’t survive.
To people on the outside, this might look like a minor case. But he knew the stakes were as high as they came.
He knew the prosecutor assigned to the case was a you
ng man named Brad Phelan, barely out of law school. He’d hoped his friend Jazlyn Prentice would be assigned the case, but these days she only handled major felonies. The sole witness for the prosecution was the arresting officer, James Voight, as young as the prosecutor and about as experienced. They wanted Henry Bates out of the way, but never once considered the personal consequences to the troubled man they manipulated. They were a bunch of bullies, albeit bullies with the official sanction of the US law enforcement system.
He hated bullies. He’d spent most of his life fighting them.
Today would be no exception.
Before he rose from the defendant’s table and started his cross-examination, he patted Henry on the back—showing the judge he liked the man. “Keep your hands under the table.”
He strode to the witness stand. His Air Jordans always put a spring in his step, not to mention an additional half-inch in his height. “Officer Voight, did you consider escorting my client to another location?”
“No. The owner of the restaurant preferred charges.”
“Did you attempt to talk him out of it?”
“That’s not my job.”
“Did you offer to get my client help?”
“Also not my job. He appeared to be intoxicated.”
“So take him to an addiction treatment center. Or at least an AA meeting. They were holding one at the Methodist church just a block away.”
“Our protocol for dealing with public disturbances is to place the offenders in custody and take them back to the station. Unfortunately, when I attempted to arrest the defendant, he became violent.”
He watched the officer testify. Many years before, a law professor had trained him to watch people carefully, observing everything. Even if the details meant nothing at the time, they might later. That advice became the foundation of his success. Many a case had been resolved favorably when his subconscious finally “connected the dots” and put those observations together in a meaningful way.
Current observations? Officer Voight didn’t seem able to sit still. He shifted his weight from one side to the other constantly. Perspiration on the back of his neck. Rumpled collar. Visible tan line across his right wrist.