Mystery Writers of America Presents the Prosecution Rests

by Inc. Mystery Writers of America

  “Will he go to jail?” Zhenya asked.

  Bonnie gave her a curious look. “Honey, weren’t you listening? He’s going away for two hundred years.”

  Zhenya gasped.

  “It’s the law here in Arizona,” Bonnie said. “A mandatory sentence of twenty years per count for possession of child pornography, with no chance of parole. They found him guilty of ten counts. Do the math.” She looked over at Warlock, who was slowly getting to his feet. “That man will die in jail.”

  As they watched, a pair of officers walked Warlock up the center aisle toward the door. His composure shattered at last, he seemed stunned, almost blind with shock and fear. As he passed, he suddenly lifted his head and looked directly at Zhenya. His gaze sharpened, and a muscle jumped in his cheek.

  He knows me,Zhenya thought.

  At the same moment Warlock started shouting. “It’s her!” he said. “That’s her—the one who set me up! The one who sent me those pictures. It’s her—I swear—”

  But for the first time Zhenya understood something others didn’t. The officers merely glanced at each other and grinned. One of them wrenched Warlock’s arm, so hard that his words changed into strange, guttural cries. Before he could get control of himself again, he was out the door, the sound of his garbled shouts still echoing in the quiet room.

  Zhenya forced herself to look at Bonnie, afraid her new friend would see through her. Would she recognize in the face, in the body, of this short-haired, blond, well-dressed young woman the dull-eyed, half-naked girl of the photos?

  But all Bonnie did was shake her head and laugh. “What was that about?”

  Zhenya gave a cautious shrug.

  “Well, good riddance to bad rubbish, I guess,” Bonnie said.

  Who knew what that meant? But it sounded like a final judgment she could live with.

  ____

  SHE AWOKE DISORIENTED and frightened. Then she remembered and, stretching, leaned her forehead against the cool glass of the bus window.

  The landscape outside was dry, sere. Where was she? Utah? Nevada?

  It didn’t matter, since she didn’t yet know where she was heading. But one thing she did know: when she got there, when she chose to step off the bus, her life would begin at last.

  BANG

  BY ANGELA ZEMAN

  Dana, I’m sorry.” Sophie Black’s whispered words sounded unnaturally loud in the glass box of a room. The nurse had disconnected the noisy machines, useless now, and the silence pressed heavily. Sophie shuddered at hearing a sigh from the man hovering at her back—like a vulture impatient for the last pump of his next dinner’s heart. Turning her head, she hissed, “Back off!” He retreated, but didn’t leave the room.

  She slipped her square, unlovely tan hand under the thin blanket to grasp what was now a claw with yellowed nails. Her most-loved friend’s hand.

  Parchment-thin eyelids opened. Eyes that could once, with only a glance, daunt a powerful opponent. The wasted remains of the woman on the bed moved her lips: “Stop.”

  Sophie understood. Dana knew how sorry she was. She shouldn’t waste time over it again. Time was against them both.

  Sophie edged closer. “You’re nearly dead.” Cruel words, but Sophie knew her friend’s intolerance of lies. Dana never found kindness in deception. She clenched her teeth, refusing the grief that promised to consume her, although tears flowed silently down her cheeks.

  “Tell me what to do. What do I do?”

  Dana’s face twisted as she tried and failed to speak. Sophie rubbed a sliver of ice across Dana’s crusted lips.

  The only color left in the ghostly face was the black of her irises, now dull as raisins. Gone the lush swag of rich burgundy hair. Gone the arches of expressive brows. Few lashes clung to the staring eyes, eyes that still revealed a brilliant mind. The oxygen feed draped across Dana’s pillow, ignored. A vinyl bag of colorless liquid hung useless from the metal rack, its tube disconnected from her arm. Her veins had collapsed.

  “Nuclear plant,” she finally managed. “Tell them.” She stopped to draw a breath. “Nuclear plant. Fremont.”

  Sophie recoiled. “Wait. Tell them? You mean—I’m to stay out of it? No! I can’t let you die like this and do nothing.” She gripped the hand a little harder, wanting Dana to feel her determination, but not wanting to hurt her.

  “No. You’ll die too.”

  “I don’t care!”

  “I care. Tell them. Nuclear plant.”

  “NO!”

  Sophie blinked in shocked realization. Dana was dead.

  “That’s it.” The voice, coming from behind her, was loud. His impatient tone angered her. She clung tighter to her friend’s hand. Such extreme suffering had seemed too strange, too unreal, until this moment. Never to be with her or talk with her again. Sophie couldn’t imagine it.

  Since the official had picked her up at JFK from her Panama flight yesterday, she’d seen nothing on his face but a smirk that seemed permanent. Only his unshaven cheeks and pungent rumpled clothes verified the sleepless hours he claimed to have put in on this case. Case, thought Sophie. She rose stiffly, pulled herself away from the bedside.

  He gestured with a thumb. “Down the hall. Room fourteen-twelve. Thought we’d save you that long, nasty trek to our offices. Bereaved as you are.” He held the door open for her.

  Bereaved. What a silly-sounding word for a raw, unfillable hole in a person’s life.

  She swept by him, stunned and expressionless, long past reacting to the trefoil radiation warning sign on the door. Her shearling coat flapped open to accommodate her long-legged strides. Dana’s coat, borrowed. Sophie would be cold, if she could feel, more used to desert heat than this New York December. Unlike Dana, Sophie ignored makeup and haircuts, and considered clothes as merely protection from unfriendly elements.

  As she walked, she swiped a sleeve across her wet face. Her pointed chin lifted; her blue eyes, pale against her deep tan, glazed with the intensity of her thoughts. She snatched up her long, ragged, sun-bleached hair and snapped a rubber band around it to keep it out of her eyes—a habit that, Dana could’ve warned the official, signaled that Sophie would tolerate no distraction. Dana had often mailed her sunscreen and the latest in outdoor gear, accompanied by scoldings to take better care of herself. Dana had often… Sophie snapped her mind back to the present.

  When they entered the room, he gestured toward a metal folding chair. The only chair in the closet-sized room. She kicked the chair aside. A button at the end of a wire lay on an otherwise barren metal desk. The wire snaked beneath the desk and vanished. She decided not to kick the desk, although the impulse was strong. Sophie’s eyes flicked a disinterested glance toward a woman already in the room.

  Sophie took a step into her tormentor’s personal space, just an inch too short in her thick work boots to look at him eye to eye. “Tell me what you’ve been doing to find her murderer.”

  He was a big man, tall, approaching forty, dark-haired, and thick with muscle. He leaned toward the tiny receiver and spoke: “Tape seventeen, Dana Fallon Case Number N-one-one-four-one–UNY. I’m Edward Eisner, temporary appointee New York State Assistant Director of the Office of Homeland Security. Also in this room is U.S. Attorney Georgina Moore, federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York. The time is five thirty-six a.m., Tuesday, December twelfth, two thousand six. Two minutes ago, Ms. Fallon expired.”

  The U.S. Attorney was a medium-height, forty-something matronly black woman with hair trimmed tight against her head and an almost military posture. She wore a red suit of soft woven wool, swathed in a matching fringed shawl, but if she felt warm, her face didn’t show it. She held out a hand. “Georgina Moore, Dr. Black. Sorry for your loss.” Sophie looked at her as if surprised she could talk.

  “What’s on those sixteen previous tapes, Director?” she asked, turning back to Eisner.

  Ms. Moore withdrew her untouched hand.

  Eisner resumed speaking for the recorder: “We’re
in University Hospital, room fourteen-twelve, questioning Dr. Sophie Black, alleged friend of the victim. Dr. Black has a PhD in forensic pathology, cultural archaeology, and”—he consulted a small notebook—“anthropological science.” He turned to Sophie. “Lot of degrees. What do you know about radiation poisoning?”

  “Now that I’ve witnessed it firsthand?” she asked bitterly. “Too much.”

  “She say anything in there we didn’t hear?”

  “You hovered over me, what could you miss? And I’m not an alleged friend.”

  “Lesbian?” This from Ms. Moore.

  Sophie glowered at her contemptuously. “No. Has nobody ever watched your back without sex involved?”

  “Watched your back…,” mused Eisner. “Interesting way to define friendship.”

  Ms. Moore said, “We’ve been retracing Ms. Fallon’s last days, trying to pinpoint the time and location of her—exposure to the radioactive isotope. We can’t get beyond a dinner meeting she attended three weeks ago in D.C. So we think, tentatively, that was the day she was poisoned. Two Mortensen University professors attended that dinner, plus another academic gentleman and the university president.” She paused. “You two received your doctorates in anthropology together at Mortensen, didn’t you?”

  Sophie, without looking at Ms. Moore, moved her head, a barely interested assent.

  Ms. Moore continued: “We have the CVs of the four gentlemen and a stack of references. Hard to see any of them being in a position to steal radioactive material.”

  Sophie looked up at this. After a pause, she said, “Yeah, it is.”

  Ms. Moore added, “We’re informed by the Health Protection Agency that this form of isotope required high-grade technical skills and a sophisticated scientific process to produce. The autopsy might reveal its geographic origin, but that takes time.”

  Eisner said, “So we’re tracing others known to be around her earlier that day, and each person’s movements backward—”

  “Following the radioactivity, I get it,” said Sophie. She sighed, her anger draining into despair.

  Interest flickered in Eisner’s eyes. “Sure. That’s what you do, right? Look at bones and pottery, then figure out who they were and all that. Except centuries ago. Talk about a cold trail.” His tone was admiring.

  At her surprised look, he said, “Until your friend got sick, I was Homicide. NYPD.”

  “Promotion or demotion?”

  His glum smirk returned. “Anybody in mind for your friend’s death?”

  “What do you mean? You heard her. Fremont, the Long Island nuclear plant. That’s what you do, isn’t it, Mr. Eisner?”

  “What?”

  “Monitor antiterrorist security?”

  They looked at each other in silence.

  Anger riveted her again. “You must think terrorists caused Dana’s death, or you wouldn’t be here! Dana’s career was one investigative crusade after another, and her latest targeted nuclear plant security. Speeches, op-ed columns… CNN! About how our nuclear plants sit virtually unguarded, ripe for terrorists. She demanded prosecution of the federal appointees running them. Fremont topped her list. Wouldn’t they, wouldn’t Fremont especially, want to shut her up? Their guilt is ridiculously obvious!”

  “‘Ridiculous’ being the key word,” Eisner said. “Why point fingers at themselves? Besides, we checked Fremont. Nothing missing. All records confirmed.”

  “Records can be falsified!”

  Ms. Moore asked, “Are you familiar with Ms. Fallon’s will?”

  Sophie snapped her head in Ms. Moore’s direction and stared. “What?”

  Eisner said, “You inherit everything.”

  “Oh.” Sophie made a dismissive noise. “Our wills. She’s like that, organized and…”

  “You get the apartment.”

  “Which you tore apart,” Sophie snapped. “She would’ve been furious.”

  Eisner shrugged. “Time’s tight. Agents also searched her D.C. townhouse. They might’ve been a little rough. Sorry.”

  Ms. Moore said, “You live out of a duffel bag on subsidy money. I’m supposed to believe you forgot you’re heir to millions? She was a highly successful woman, and from a wealthy family.”

  “That never mattered. She knew I hate the responsibility of owning things, so she shared.”

  “From what we discovered, she practically mothered you,” said Ms. Moore.

  Sophie almost smiled. “She always said I wasn’t housebroken.” She thought for a minute. “You investigated me?”

  Eisner and Moore gave no reply.

  She exhaled. “Her family dumped her. Dana’s work required a spotlight, she always said they were allergic to publicity. I never had family. We made our own family.” She shot a glance at Eisner. “So, yeah, we watched each other’s back. She was the only person in this world who cared about me. What’s money, compared to having her?”

  Ms. Moore’s eyelids lowered to slits. “Well, Congress failed to pass their budget for next year, producing a crisis in science financing, throwing thousands of scientists out of a job. What about you?”

  Sophie slowly pulled the chair upright and straddled it. “I’ve never needed government grants.”

  Ms. Moore’s eyebrows lifted. “Until now. According to our information, Mortensen dismissed you. What did you do wrong?”

  Sophie said nothing.

  “They were covering your expenses exclusively. Why was that?”

  “Publicity. They’re—were—eager to claim credit for my group’s project. When we reveal our conclusions, they’ll be front and center for global media attention. Publicity attracts donations, enhances their reputation, which attracts the more elite students—sort of an endless wheel of profit producing.” Sophie looked away. “I’m exploring European sources.”

  Ms. Moore said softly, “But I hear your project is unpopular. Won’t that hurt your chances to find new funds?”

  Eisner glanced at Ms. Moore. “Why? What’s she doing?”

  “Genome mapping. She and her group are trying to solve one of the great mysteries of civilization: the specific origin of the first Homo sapiens. They’re tracking migrations using DNA. Studying how and when the different ethnic groups formed through gradual mutations. I hear it’s working well, especially via pockets of indigenous groups.”

  Eisner squinted. “What?”

  Sophie nodded. “True—in Alaska, the Amazon, anywhere we can find them. People who’ve lived a long time in especially close-knit isolation make it easier for us to track adaptations through several generations. But many are so unsophisticated, it’s hard to get them to understand why we want samples of their blood… they get upset. They’re barely aware of a world outside of their own boundaries, let alone how DNA works.” Sophie exhaled helplessly. “We give them medicine in trade for their help, but…”

  Ms. Moore continued: “Her findings threaten some tribes’ religious beliefs. For others, their assumed origins give them claims to income and land ownership. The results of her work could change boundaries, religion, history, income. Lots of anger.”

  Eisner almost laughed. “She’s messing with money and religion?”

  Ms. Moore added softly, “And race.”

  Sophie raised her hands in frustration. “It’s overreaction. We’re talking fifty thousand years ago. Only scientists will care. Maybe medical research… but what has that got to do with Dana’s murder?”

  “How much grant money?” asked Eisner.

  “Massive lab fees. Archaeological digs. Travel. Salaries.” Sophie shook her head.

  “Ms. Fallon’s millions would certainly bridge your funding gap,” said Ms. Moore. “And if your project succeeds, you’ll change global history! You’ll earn prizes. Fame. All the money you could ever want will fall in your lap.”

  Sophie frowned. “Not just me. The whole group. And we’re building on the work of many others…” She fell silent for a long moment. “I don’t understand.” She looked at Eisner, blue eyes du
ll with pain. “Your presence means somebody thinks it’s terrorism. You think I’m a terrorist? Or do you think I killed Dana for her money? Which is it?”

  Eisner considered her. “There could be a connection. You travel through some of the world’s nastiest spots, Dr. Black. You cross borders, trek straight through warfare, you were even air-lifted across Afghanistan—by Afghan guerrilla fighters.”

  She looked taken aback. “How did you learn that?”

  He shrugged. “As the only beneficiary of your friend’s demise, plan on staying in town.”

  She bolted to her feet. “You’re accusing me?”

  Eisner began straightening up the room. “You’ll hear from us.”

  Color rose in her face. “You can’t force me to stay here! I’m supposed to meet Dr. Guzman in the morning!”

  “Who?” asked Eisner, pausing.

  Ms. Moore murmured, “Nobel Prize–winner Xavier Guzman. The first to decipher a complete genome map.”

  “Exactly. We’re flying together to Nicaragua tomorrow.” Sophie wrung her hands in agitation. “This trip took months… No! I’m going!”

  “Ah,” said Eisner. “Then lucky your best friend died according to your schedule.”

  She recoiled as if he’d struck her.

  “You go nowhere until Dana Fallon’s murderer is found,” said Ms. Moore crisply.

  Sophie swayed, but said nothing more.

  “End of session. Time, six twelve a.m.” Eisner plucked the tiny receiver off the desk, began winding the cord into loops. He dropped it and a small box into a briefcase. “I don’t think you understand, Ms. Black. I can do whatever I think necessary. New times, new—everything.”

  Eisner left the room. Ms. Moore followed, shoulders bowed as if carrying a heavy load. She paused and held out a business card. “If you think of anything, find me. A bad way to die.”

  The door swung shut and she was alone. Alone as she hadn’t been since she first met Dana Fallon, her new roommate, freshman year at Michigan.

  It was as if she were five again, when her mother coolly informed her that her daddy had died during the night. She’d added, “Just as well. I planned to divorce him anyway.” Then a blank yawning chasm of years: unnoticed, unwanted, untouched, leaving her with a shaky notion that possibly she didn’t really exist. When her mother died twelve years after her father, Sophie’s life didn’t change, it merely continued. Until her first day freshman year at college.