Death to the Chief (Atlanta Murder Squad Book 2)

by Lance McMillian

  I comment, “Interesting lunch.”

  “I feel so bad. Part of me wants to apologize, part of me thinks I should drop it. Not the normal first date, that’s for sure.”

  I freeze—the second thing she has said today to stop me in my tracks. A date? She registers the confusion in my face and groans.

  “You didn’t know?”

  Caught flat-footed, I opt to remain mute, which itself is an answer. She exclaims, “God, I feel stupid. This day is turning into a nightmare. I’m so sorry.”

  For the first time, I notice her lack of a wedding ring.

  She turns around to leave.

  “Wait.”

  Cate faces me again, her eyes begging me to spare her further humiliation. I assess her with fresh perspective—roughly my age, dark auburn air, cute features, nice figure. She is attractive.

  “I’m not uninterested. I just didn’t know.”

  12

  The team gathers together first thing Monday morning in the squad room to share the results of our respective investigative efforts. Over the weekend, Sophie Applewhite and J.D. Hendrix partnered up to nail down the stories of the caterers at the party that night. Sophie gets the ball rolling.

  “Four caterers were working the party. The chef, Joanna Bates, also the owner. The bartender, Jeff Browning. Plus two wait staff, Millie Thomas and Rich Beal. According to Bates, they arrived at the building around five-thirty and worked non-stop cooking, setting up the tables, or tending bar until the murder put the kibosh on the festivities.”

  Scott asks, “‘Kibosh’? Is that the word she used?”

  Sophie answers, “Shut up, you.”

  Despite their break-up a few years ago, Sophie and Scott still engage in this type of friendly banter. The relationship failed because the two were too much alike. Taylor—the team’s administrative assistant from my hometown—laughs at the exchange. Sophie proceeds.

  “The kitchen area is on the other side of the building from the Chief Justice’s chambers. The bar was over there as well. Except for when Thomas and Beal set up the tables on the landing, all four of the caterers remained in that vicinity, far away from the other wing of the courthouse. The caterers also lacked access to the hallways where the justices work. Only people with keys can reach those back areas. Background checks on the four didn’t reveal anything interesting, either—no criminal histories, no litigation that might’ve reached the Supreme Court. Based on everything we found, J.D. and I believe we can eliminate the caterers as suspects.”

  The conclusion makes sense and confirms my prior assumption that the caterers are a poor fit for this crime. Too random or fortuitous—take your pick.

  Scott observes, “Excellent. We tentatively eliminate them as suspects. But they’re still witnesses. What did they see?”

  J.D. answers this time.

  “Remember they were busy working and not trying to keep track of anybody’s movements. But we showed the four of them a bunch of pictures of everyone at the party. The consensus is that a group of eight people hung out together on the landing—Justice Stockton and her husband, Justice Milan and his wife, Justice Jenkins and his wife, Justice Cordell, and Justice Wong. None of the caterers can swear, though, that all eight remained on the landing the whole time. The caterers also remember a cop stationed at the far door on the Chief Justice’s side of the building. The cop at some point talked to Gene Davis who approached the cop from the courtroom. Later the bartender recalls the cop wandering along the balcony. They even exchanged a few words. Senator Parsons, Justice Lumpkin, and Clerk of Court Miller also made appearances over the course of the evening. Parsons and Lumpkin exited the landing together to the other hallway near the bar. Finally, the bartender says an old woman kept ordering drinks.”

  The caterers confirm Kenny’s account about the group of justices and spouses socializing on the landing. They also confirm Kenny’s presence near the right hallway door and later the balcony. I peg all of them as unlikely suspects, further tightening our net.

  ***

  The senior member of our team—Marlon Freeman—is up next. After Warren Jackson’s left finger unlocked his cell phone for us, we gave it to Marlon to uncover its secrets. Marlon was at the forefront of using technology in police work, which is how he ended up in homicide at a young age, despite his race. I still don’t know the full story as to why he got run out of the Atlanta Police Department, but his reputation as one of the best detectives in the APD persists years after his ouster. His calm demeanor and the competence that underlies it command respect.

  He begins, “Data on the phone exists on two levels—the seen and the unseen. The seen stuff was the usual pedestrian fare. While the texts between Jackson and his wife were acrimonious, the rest of it falls into the mundane. The unseen is more interesting, except harder to find. Had to run specialized software over a day to recover the deleted data. But it was worth it on two fronts.”

  Everyone in the room looks to him in expectation. Marlon continues.

  “First item of interest. On the night of the murder, an audio recording was deleted from the phone. The audio covered a snippet of the beginning of a conversation.”

  Marlon presses on a digital device, and I recognize Warren Jackson’s voice from the earlier recording with Gene Davis.

  “To what do I owe this unexpected surprise?”

  The tone isn’t friendly, more like annoyed.

  “Good to see you, too, Chief.”

  I don’t recognize the voice. Another voice I don’t recognize asks, “Why are you looking at your phone like that, Chief?”

  Scott cuts in, “That’s Jerry Dalton.”

  Jackson responds, “What do you mean?”

  A thump is heard on the recording. Jerry Dalton again speaks, “Not cool, Chief. Trying to record our conversation on the sly. You don’t mind if I delete this recording, do you? I’ll give you your phone back when we’re done.”

  “Hey—”

  The audio ends.

  “The file was created at 5:52 p.m. on the night of the murder,” Marlon says, “and deleted immediately thereafter.”

  Kenny told us that the Dalton brothers and Gene were leaving Jackson’s chambers when he brought Beverly in. That was ten minutes after six, meaning the conversation that Warren Jackson sought to record lasted for approximately twenty minutes.

  I ask, “The other voice on the recording has to be Tommy Dalton, right?”

  Sophie finds a video on the internet of Tommy Dalton speaking. She plays it for the group, and we all agree that Tommy Dalton was the person who said, “Good to see you, too, Chief.”

  On Wednesday, I have an appointment to speak with Tommy Dalton. Before that meeting, Scott and I plan to tackle Gene Davis together first thing in the morning.

  I say to Marlon, “You said there were two interesting things you found on the phone.”

  “Right. A series of deleted texts between Jackson and someone referred to only as ‘AC.’ The texts indicate a sexual relationship as recently as last winter.”

  Scott looks to me and says, “AC?”

  I consider the question and speculate, “Aurora Cox Winnett.”

  He whistles. I explain to the rest of the group Beverly Jackson’s insistence that Aurora Winnett had an affair with her husband and that Gary Winnett wasn’t happy about it. Marlon feeds us some more details.

  “I tried tracing AC’s number without luck. Prepaid phone with prepaid refill cards to add minutes. Looks like a burner.”

  Barbara Hsu—the other lawyer on the team and alleged Dragon Lady—observes, “A burner on one end, but not the other. Weird.”

  Marlon then describes the texts. Jackson and AC apparently had an affair last winter until AC started to get cold feet. AC told him it was over. Jackson begged her to reconsider. Asked her to come to his lake house. AC agreed. The messages stopped at that point, until two weeks ago when AC texted, “I miss you.” Jackson deleted this last text and never responded.

  Today
is the day I interview most of the justices in their chambers, and Justice Aurora Winnett is transforming from a curiosity to a bona fide person of interest.

  Before the meeting breaks up, I hand out new assignments.

  “Sophie and J.D.—start surveillance on Gene Davis. If he meets with Tommy Dalton, stay on him, but if you spot Jerry Dalton, break it off. He was a Navy SEAL, and we don’t need him figuring out that we’ve latched onto their scent. Marlon—keep pulling the thread. Anything you can find out about the phone, AC, what the Daltons had on Jackson, and what they wanted Jackson to do for them. Work your magic. Barbara—prepare wiretap warrants for Davis, Tommy Dalton, and Jerry Dalton. Try to get a meeting with Judge Mary Woodcomb first thing Wednesday morning to sign them. I’ll go with you. She’s going to need some persuading.”

  I sit alone after the team goes its separate ways. Warren Jackson tried to extort my father for a seat on the Georgia Supreme Court. When that failed, Jackson found another dance partner, leaving Daddy out in the cold. The irony of Jackson being on the wrong end of similar tactics is not lost on me. Did the extortion have anything to do with his murder? I don’t know. But any way you roll the dice, the count comes out the same.

  Politics is an ugly business.

  13

  Political delicacy requires me to approach questioning the justices of the Supreme Court with a velvet glove. For that reason, I will conduct these interviews alone. But I have no qualms about Scott and me tackling Clerk of Court Larry Miller together.

  Miller is on the back end of middle age and seems already frazzled for a Monday morning. We meet him on the fifth-floor landing. He runs a few minutes late.

  “Sorry for keeping you waiting. It couldn’t be helped. Crisis after crisis. We’re still building out certain parts of the courthouse. Hackers are trying to get into our computer database. The Supreme Court hosts its first oral argument in the new courtroom this week. And that’s all on top of the Chief being murdered. I’m being run ragged, and I don’t know how much more I can stomach. I’m Larry Miller, by the way. Nice to meet you. I saw your press conference on television. That’s how I recognized you.”

  He shakes our hands. The Clerk of Court is responsible for making sure the trains run on time by handling the administrative burdens of the court, which allows the judges to focus on judging. If Miller is to be believed, the train is poised to jump the track.

  Off the bat, I ask his help in pinpointing everyone’s whereabouts on the night of the murder. He shows us the locations of the justices and their spouses gathered on the landing, the bartender, and the caterers who prepared the food. To his knowledge, all of these people remained in the same spots during the critical time.

  A stone’s toss away is the secured door to the hallway that runs on the left side of the outer ring of the courtroom—opposite from Jackson’s side of the building. We enter, and Miller points out two unoccupied offices just past the door. When Senator Clement Parsons and his security man arrived, Miller provided them with these offices for their use. Right afterwards, officer Kenny came by to take the Senator to the Chief Justice, and Miller doesn’t remember seeing Parsons again that night.

  Miller’s own movements are harder to pin down.

  “I was all over the place, running everywhere like a chicken with his head cut off. I hired the caterers and had to check in with them to make sure the preparations were coming along. If the food is bad, that’s my fault. You never want to face a hungry judge. Before dinner, we were going to have a few speeches around seven-thirty in the courtroom. The microphone needed testing and things like that. I had expected the Chief to be out and milling around earlier in the evening, but I knew enough not to bother him. He’d come out when he was good and ready. I was in the back hallway behind the courtroom when I heard Mrs. Jackson’s scream. I ran to her right away. It was awful.”

  We travel up the left hallway until it dead ends into the back hall that runs behind the courtroom. The three of us turn right, and Miller takes us to the location where he heard the scream—the same backdoor to the courtroom that Scott and I traveled through the other day.

  Scott asks, “What were you doing back here?”

  “I was kinda checking to see if the Chief or Mrs. Jackson was about. As I said, it was time to start. I didn’t want to get in trouble for things not starting on time. But I also didn’t want to get in trouble for disturbing the Chief in his chambers. The hope was to see him walking around. Or maybe find Mrs. Jackson and ask her to check on the Chief.”

  “Did you see Mrs. Jackson?”

  “Not at that time—I mean, not before the scream. I remember her being at the bar earlier in the evening. Maybe she wandered through the courtroom at one point. You can check with Tommy and Jerry Dalton. They were in the courtroom. Gene Davis, too. Other than that, I guess I assumed Mrs. Jackson was in with the Chief. But she was always liable to be anywhere. She did what she wanted.”

  From the backdoor to the courtroom, he takes us around the corner to the Chief’s chambers and indicates the spot in the hall where he found Mrs. Jackson after her scream, just outside the door to the Chief’s chambers.

  I ask, “What did you do next?”

  “Mrs. Jackson pointed to the door and said that Warren was dead. I rushed into the chambers, thinking that maybe he had a heart attack and I could do CPR or something. But then I saw him in the chair and all the blood.”

  He shakes his head and trails off.

  Scott removes the crime tape and tells him to open the door to Jackson’s chambers. Miller seems unsure, but the determined looks on our faces resolve his doubts. He takes out a key and wrestles with the lock before it gives. He doesn’t bother to hide his exasperation.

  “New building. You would think they could make a lock that worked. It’s due to be changed any day now. A new justice will be moving in soon. I need to have things perfect before that person gets here.”

  We walk back to the murder scene. Miller shivers a little when we enter the Chief’s office, a pained expression reflecting distaste for being here again. I press him on how he heard Beverly’s scream but not the fatal gunshot. He takes the question as an accusation of murder and bristles in response.

  “Well, I don’t know where I was when he was shot, do I? When Beverly screamed, I was just around the corner, easy to hear her. Here’s something you probably don’t know, either. The walls to the judges’ offices are soundproofed. The Chief liked his quiet and fought to make sure that feature was included in the construction.”

  “Good to know.”

  He eyes me suspiciously.

  Scott asks, “You know of anyone who wanted the Chief Justice dead?”

  The flinch of Miller’s eyes betrays something—a dislike of the deceased perhaps. He tries to wash the guilty look off his face but misses a spot. He shakes his head “no” to the question and chomps his upper lip. The sense that Miller doesn’t particularly miss the late Warren Jackson is strong.

  I press him, “How would you describe your own relationship with the Chief Justice?”

  “Professional.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’m not here to be friends with the justices. I serve at their pleasure to make sure the court operates smoothly. The Chief Justice and I worked closely together toward that end. We had disagreements, of course, but things always remained professional. The Chief was a stickler for manners, and I always knew where I stood with him.”

  “Was he a difficult man?”

  He pauses and glances toward Jackson’s empty chair, the one still splattered with blood.

  “He was demanding. Not the first justice to be demanding, and he won’t be the last. I didn’t kill him if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “Fair enough. You know everyone who was at the party. One of them killed him. If you had to place a wager, who would your money be on?”

  “I couldn’t possibly give you a name.”

  “Come on, help us out. You’ve surely t
hought about it. Whose face do you see as the murderer’s when you’re trying to go to sleep at night?”

  “I don’t know. Adam Lumpkin and the Chief didn’t get along, but that doesn’t mean Justice Lumpkin killed him. I refuse to believe it.”

  “And where are Lumpkin’s chambers?”

  “Right next door.”

  14

  Outside Justice Winnett’s chambers, I confirm her nameplate on the door: “Aurora Cox Winnett.”

  Her assistant leads me to the judge and leaves the two of us alone. I offer, “Thank you for—”

  “Stop it.”

  The palm of Winnett’s hand shoots up to reinforce the message behind her words. I stop.

  “And there is no need for you to sit down, Mr. Meridian. You won’t be here long. I agreed to this meeting for the sole purpose of explaining that I won’t be talking to you. Before becoming a judge, I served the indigent as a criminal defense attorney. The epitaph on my grave will read, ‘Don’t talk to the cops.’ I intend to follow my own advice.”

  “I’m not a cop.”

  “Close enough. I know your background—just another prosecutor with a stellar win-loss record who doesn’t realize how one-sided the odds are stacked in his favor. Your type is a dime a dozen, and I’m still not buying. You can leave now.”

  “Beverly Jackson told me you were sleeping with her husband.”

  Her eyes narrow, and she flares, “You sound like a cop.”

  Good. Maybe if I rattle her, Winnett will start to engage. She glares at me with contempt but holds her tongue. I take another stab at it.

  “We have texts between the Chief Justice and someone called ‘AC,’ talking about their affair. ‘AC’—Aurora Cox. Are you AC?”

  Her anger starts to boil. I throw another log on the fire.