Corpus Delicti (David Brunelle Legal Thriller Book 6)

by Stephen Penner

  The night air and mesmerizing sidewalk didn’t seem to be doing their job.

  “Damn it,” he muttered—apparently, a bit too loudly.

  “You talking to me?” came a voice from the darkness.

  Brunelle looked up to face the owner of the voice—a young man by the sound of it. It took a moment, though, in the darkness, until the man stepped out of the shadow of some trees, his location hidden from the streetlights which Brunelle suddenly felt were far too infrequent in whatever part of the no man’s land he’d walked to.

  The speaker was indeed a young man. A large young man. And homeless by the looks of him. Young plus homeless often meant mentally ill. His appearance bore that out. He was taller than Brunelle by two or three inches, and probably outweighed him as well, despite a life on the streets, although that might have been the layers of shirts and jackets he wore. He had a matted black beard and black hair sticking out under a ski cap. Brunelle couldn’t tell if his face was dirty or just gaunt and baggie-eyed. But above the under-eye smudges were bright, excited, potentially deranged eyes. Brunelle braced himself.

  “I said,” the man raised his voice, “are you talking to me?”

  Brunelle glanced around to assess his surroundings. There were a few other figures in the dark but no one else near him. It was several blocks back to the more inhabited area of downtown. He’d only be able to outrun the younger man if the younger man decided he wasn’t worth chasing. “No,” Brunelle answered. “I was talking to myself.”

  “Oh!” came the indignant response. “You’re too good to talk to me?”

  Brunelle grimaced. This wasn’t going to go well. “No, no. I just meant, I was lost in thought.”

  “You didn’t even see me, huh?” the man growled. He took a step toward Brunelle. “I’m just invisible to you, is that it?”

  Brunelle looked around again. That flight option was growing in appeal. “No, of course not. I’m just—I’m just going for a walk, trying to think through some stuff. I’m sorry if I disturbed you.”

  Brunelle hoped that might be the end of it. Apologies had a way of being disarming.

  But no such luck.

  “Disturbed?” Another two steps toward Brunelle. He was within lunging distance now. “You think I’m disturbed?”

  Brunelle instinctively took a step back. “That’s not what I said.” A non-answer, but better than the honest one. One more step toward him and Brunelle was going to make a run for it.

  But the man stopped his advance. In fact, his expression suddenly changed, and he took a half-step back himself, looking Brunelle up and down with an exaggerated head bob. “What the hell are you supposed to be? You a lawyer or something?”

  Brunelle looked down at his own clothes. Dark suit, dark overcoat, white shirt, red tie. Yep, he looked like a lawyer all right. The only people left in Seattle who wore suits were the lawyers. The techies never wore suits. Even the bankers were in khakis and denim shirts any more.

  “Uh,” Brunelle started. It was actually a more complicated question than it seemed. He was indeed a lawyer, but he was a prosecutor. You had to be a lawyer to be a prosecutor, but prosecutors were different; they were more like bureaucrats than real lawyers. His usual answer to the question—he got it more often than you’d think, but again no one else wore suits—was something like, ‘Sort of. I’m a prosecutor.’ But his professional experience told him the large, mentally ill, homeless man might have had a few run-ins with the law. Identifying himself as a prosecutor might be all that was needed to finally set the man off for real. So Brunelle opted for accurate, but uninformative. “Uh, yeah. I’m a lawyer.”

  The man’s expression instantly changed, and, to Brunelle’s surprise, for the better. “Oh yeah?” His expression softened immediately and he took a non-threatening step forward, his palm extended. “Hey, man, you got a card? I got some warrants I need to get cleared up.”

  Brunelle exhaled. The plight of being a lawyer: no one likes you until they need you. This guy needed a criminal defense attorney, so there was definitely no way Brunelle was going to admit he was a prosecutor. This was his get-out-uncomfortable-confrontation-free card. But speaking of cards, he didn’t have any. Private attorneys needed them for exactly this sort of situation, meeting potential new clients. But Brunelle didn’t have clients, so he never carried business cards.

  “Oh man.” He feigned patting his pockets. “I just gave my last one away.”

  The other man narrowed his eyes. “You don’t want me for a client?”

  And now it was time for full-blown lying. “Of course I do,” Brunelle said, trying to mollify the larger, younger, more excitable man. “I just don’t have any cards.”

  The man’s distrusting gaze deepened. “Don’t you even want to know what the warrants are for?”

  Brunelle shrugged. “Not really. Whatever. I mean, I don’t care what they’re for. It’s just my job to get rid of them for you.”

  Or it would be, if I were actually a defense attorney. Brunelle glanced around again. If he could extract himself safely, he was walking straight back to the courthouse. Fast.

  The man laughed at his explanation. “Yeah, you lawyers are just like hookers. You don’t care what you gotta do, so long as you get paid.”

  Brunelle grimaced at the description. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the first time he’d heard lawyers compared to prostitutes. There were professional similarities.

  “Yeah, well. Everybody deserves a defense.” He’d heard some true believer defense attorney say that once. It seemed appropriate somehow.

  “Even me?”

  Brunelle nodded. “Even you.”

  The man’s expression snapped back to the angry one he’d first worn when Brunelle had said ‘Damn it’ at him. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  Aw, shit.

  “You think you’re so much better than me,” the man demanded, “just ‘cause you wear a fucking suit?”

  That’s not the only reason. Brunelle hoped in the dark his expression didn’t betray his thoughts. “No, it’s just a suit.”

  The man started nodding. An overly emphatic, not quite lucid nod. “That’s right, man. That’s right. You just a suit. You just another fucking suit. You ain’t no different from the next.”

  Brunelle just blinked at the no longer scary man.

  “You hear me?” the man yelled. “You lawyers are all the same. You’re all the fucking same.”

  “Yeah,” Brunelle replied slowly, his own nod just as detached from the real conversation as the homeless man’s. “I’m just like a hooker,” he said. “And one ain’t no different from the next.”

  Chapter 23

  The first thing Brunelle did the next morning was call Chen. “Larry, it’s Brunelle. We need to talk.”

  Brunelle expected push-back, maybe some ambivalence. At least an irritated sigh. But Chen was fully on-board, enthusiastic even. “I agree. We do.”

  That was good, although momentarily disorienting. “Uh, okay. Great. So, here’s the thing—“

  “No,” Chen interrupted. “Not over the phone. We should meet in person.”

  “Oh, okay,” Brunelle replied. He wouldn’t mind seeing Chen face-to-face, he supposed. “Should I come down there or you come to my office?”

  But Chen demurred. “No. Let’s go someplace else. Someplace off-campus. Do you know where the Seneca Street Roastery is?”

  Brunelle didn’t, but he could guess. “Seneca Street?”

  Chen allowed a laugh. “Right. Sixth and Seneca. I’ll meet you there in twenty minutes.”

  “Sounds good,” Brunelle agreed. Then, considering lugging the file and three-ring binders across downtown, “Should I bring anything?”

  Chen laughed again, but less mirthfully. “Just your phone.”

  *

  Chen had beaten him there, already seated at a tall table in the back corner. Brunelle waved to him, then went to the counter to order a tall americano. After the barista finished his drin
k, Brunelle pulled out a stool and joined the detective.

  “Nice place,” Brunelle commented with a glance around the coffee shop. There were only two other people in the place. One was the barista, the other was a scrawny, bearded guy crouched over a laptop a few tables away. “And out of the way. Good idea. What I wanted to talk about might be better discussed here after all.”

  Chen raised an eyebrow but didn’t reply immediately.

  Brunelle continued. “I have an idea about what to do about Linda Prescott’s death. But I’m going to need your help.” He thought for a moment. “Well, maybe not ‘need’ exactly, but it’s probably better if we do this together. I’m not a cop. I have to be reminded of that sometimes.”

  Brunelle stopped. Chen was listening to him, but he wasn’t hearing him. The detective’s expression made clear he had something else occupying his thoughts. “What?” Brunelle asked.

  Chen frowned and locked eyes with Brunelle. “I found your number on her phone.”

  Brunelle’s heart dropped.

  “And,” Chen added, “the texts you sent her.”

  Brunelle felt his cheeks sear, despite knowledge of his own innocence. He raised his palms in protest. “Wow. Okay. No. It’s not what you think.”

  But Chen just shook his head. “What the hell, Dave? First, you throw away your relationship with Kat to fuck someone half your age. Now you’re going to hookers?”

  Brunelle closed his eyes and exhaled through his nose. “I’m not going to hookers. And Robyn isn’t half my age. More like two-thirds.”

  Chen waved the response away. “Whatever. Kat and Robyn are your business. But going to hookers is my business. It’s a fucking crime, Dave. Patronizing a prostitute. You want to throw away a great woman, go ahead. But don’t throw away your career.”

  “I wasn’t patronizing a prostitute, Larry,” Brunelle insisted.

  “I read the texts, Dave,” Chen countered. “At least you didn’t sign your name to them. But Jesus, what were you thinking, using your own phone? I know your number, Dave. It jumped off the screen at me.”

  “Larry, you’re not listening to me,” Brunelle interrupted. “I wasn’t trying to fuck her. I was trying to warn her.”

  Chen laughed darkly. “Warn her? For a hundred roses an hour? Must have been one hell of a warning.”

  Brunelle lowered his head into his hands. “You’re not listening to me.” He looked up again. “I wanted to warn her that Brown knew she’d snitched him out. I had to hand her name over to Edwards, and I wanted her to know. It was the only way I knew how to contact her.”

  Chen looked long and hard at Brunelle. “Jesus, Dave, you were her next john. She OD’d right when you were supposed to meet her. Shit, for all I know, you saw the cop cars and freaked out.”

  “I did freak out,” Brunelle admitted. “But I didn’t see any cop cars. I just got scared and left.”

  Chen cocked his head. “Scared of what?”

  Brunelle shrugged. “I don’t know. Her, Brown, getting caught by those cops who showed up after I left.”

  Chen leaned forward and lowered his face. “I don’t know whether to believe you.”

  Brunelle looked directly at his friend. “I don’t care if you believe me. It’s true.”

  Chen kept his face lowered, but his eyes raised to meet Brunelle’s. He chewed his cheeks for several moments. Finally, he shoved himself up again. “Okay. I believe you. You’re stupid, but you’re not an idiot.” Then Chen leaned forward again, resting a forearm on the table. “But I know you, Dave. I know you’re not really stupid enough to go to a prostitute. You’re just stupid enough to use your own phone to text her.”

  Brunelle had to laugh. “Fuck you, too, Larry. But, yeah, I guess so.”

  Chen leaned back in his chair again. “Kat really did you a favor.”

  Brunelle had been about to reach for his drink, but the sound of Kat’s name stunned him. “A—A favor? How?”

  “By declaring Linda’s death an accident,” Chen explained. “If she’d said it was a homicide, I’d have to write a report about finding your cell number on her phone.”

  “I’d deny it,” Brunelle said.

  “You just admitted it,” Chen pointed out.

  “You didn’t Mirandize me.”

  “You’re not in custody.”

  “Damn.” Brunelle took a sip of his coffee. “You win.”

  “No, it’s a win-win,” Chen replied. “I know you did it, but I don’t have to tell anyone.”

  “Well, good,” Brunelle replied over another sip of coffee.

  “Yeah,” Chen took a casual sip of his own coffee. “You should send her a thank you note or something.”

  “And you,” Brunelle replied, “should shut the hell up.”

  “Fine,” Chen agreed. “But you take my advice, too: stop texting hookers.”

  “Deal,” Brunelle answered. Then, in all seriousness, he added, “I’ll go in person.”

  Chen’s eyebrows shot up, but before he could say anything, Brunelle pointed a finger at him. “And you’re coming with me.”

  Chapter 24

  “Remind me again why I’m here,” Chen asked as they pulled into the parking lot of the Aurora Motel.

  “Because we both know I shouldn’t be out here alone,” Brunelle answered as he pulled his car into a parking stall near the manager’s office. “Only a detective should do the witness interview.”

  “And why are you here?” Chen followed up.

  “Because,” Brunelle put the car in park and turned off the engine, “once the interview is over, only a prosecutor can give her immunity.”

  Chen grinned, then nodded. He looked around. “So now what?”

  “Now we wait,” Brunelle answered. “But I don’t think we’ll have to wait very long.”

  Sure enough, even as Brunelle finished his sentence, a woman sidled up to their car. “Hey, there. You boys looking for a date?”

  It was the same woman as his first trip there. Brunelle recognized her. She clearly didn’t recognize him. She saw a lot of men, he supposed, and she probably tried to not remember any of them.

  She was probably 20. Brunelle had never been great at guessing women’s ages. Her excess makeup and years of life on the street made it even more difficult, aging her beyond her years. She was short, probably 5’3”, and a little on the plump side, with large breasts and a bit of a belly. Not that Brunelle was looking. It was just impossible to miss, given the tiny tank top and miniskirt she’d squeezed herself into.

  She peered into the car. “Oh, there’s two of you, huh? Yeah, I don’t do that. But I can get another girl.” She looked over to Chen, as if her pairing with Brunelle were settled. “What kind of girl are you looking for?”

  “The kind,” Chen leaned forward to answer, “who knew Amy Corrigan.”

  If the woman had been high or drunk—a definite possibility—she suddenly sobered up.

  “Amy?” she repeated, an edge of fear all too obvious in her voice. “Why do you want to know about Amy?”

  Chen didn’t answer. Instead, he nodded toward the back seat of the car. “Get in.”

  The woman looked at the back seat, but hesitated.

  “We can’t talk out here in the open,” Chen explained.

  When she hesitated still, Brunelle added. “We’ll pay you for your time.”

  Brunelle wasn’t sure Chen could offer that, but he was willing to. He understood what she really feared.

  “He won’t beat you,” Brunelle assured her. “Not tonight.”

  A wave of emotions washed down the woman’s face, but not all of them were easily identifiable. But Brunelle could read the two that mattered: fear, and hope.

  “What’s your name?” Brunelle asked her.

  There was only the slightest hesitation this time. “Tina.”

  Brunelle smiled as kindly as he knew how. “Get in the car, Tina.”

  She nodded. “Okay,” she practically whispered. A few moments later, Tina was in
the back seat, and Brunelle was pulling out onto Aurora Avenue.

  A rolling car was hardly the optimal interrogation room. In short order, they had reached Green Lake, a small inland lake in Seattle’s north end. Rather than hookers and drug addicts, the paved path around Green Lake was populated by joggers and baby strollers, even at that late hour. Brunelle turned off Aurora and found a parking spot near the recreation building at the east end of the lake.

  They stepped out of the car and found seats at a nearby picnic table. They were hiding in plain sight. Or at least talking in plain sight where no one cared what they were doing. Which was just as good.

  Interrogations usually started with warm up questions. Name, rank, and serial number. Simple questions, designed to get background information and test the subject’s truthfulness. If they’d lie about their own name, how could you believe whatever they said about the crime?

  But this wasn’t a usual interrogation. Brunelle sat silently while Chen folded his hands across the table from Tina. “Tell me about Amy,” the detective asked.

  “Amy? Amy was great.” Tina shook her head slightly and looked away, at nothing in particular. “She was sweet, kind, funny. She wasn’t the smartest, but if you needed something, anything, she was there for you. She’d give you the shirt off her back.” Then she laughed. “I mean, if she was wearing one.”

  Brunelle smiled slightly at the joke; Chen, too, but less so. It was one thing to be polite, but this was serious business.

  “Do you work for Kenny Brown, too?” Chen asked.

  Tina’s eyes widened just a bit. “No, thank God. I’ve seen what he does to his girls.”

  “Are you independent then?” Chen followed up.

  Brunelle wanted to jump in, too, but he managed to bite his lip and let the cop do the interrogation. That was the plan. He knew to stick to it.

  Tina laughed, but joylessly. “No. You don’t get to be independent. Not for long. Too many pimps around. A girl can’t keep her money when there’s five guys ready to beat her head in for it.”

  Brunelle frowned. They just used women like Tina. But then again, he realized, what was he doing?