Close to Home (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 5)

by Robert Dugoni

“I’ve heard Cho has been assigned to prosecute Trejo.”

  Battles knew he’d been in her office for a reason. “Doesn’t surprise me.”

  “He’s never lost a felony case.”

  “There’s always a first time.” Battles sat back. “I’ll go through the evidence and see how strong it is. If it’s as strong as represented, Trejo might have to plea.”

  Stanley stood. “Sounds like you have it under control. Be sure you do.”

  “Captain?” Battles asked, puzzled by Stanley’s comment.

  Stanley braced her arms on the back of the chair and slightly pitched toward Battles. “Command is going to be watching this one closely, Lee. Cutting to the chase, it’s ugly. If Trejo ran down that kid and fled, it’s not going to paint the Navy in a very favorable light, and if the video is as damning as the police department contends, and Trejo won’t own up to it . . .” She let that thought linger. “So make sure he understands the gravity of the crime and the gravity of the current political climate—were he to choose to fight the charges.”

  PART 2

  TWO WEEKS LATER

  CHAPTER 17

  The odds hadn’t been great, but that hadn’t eased Tracy’s disappointment. She wrapped the pregnancy stick in toilet tissue and discarded it in the garbage pail next to her empty prescription bottle of Clomid. Her fourteen days were up. She felt like an expired carton of milk. Dr. Kramer said she could still get pregnant, that the drug would remain in her system for a while, but he didn’t sound optimistic when he said it.

  Neither was she.

  At least now that she was off the medication, maybe the hot flashes and mood swings would subside. Lucky her, she’d been one of the few to experience the side effects, and they’d nearly driven her crazy the past two weeks. She’d felt like she’d been sweating from the inside out. She’d kick the quilt off at night with her heart racing and her T-shirt damp. Poor Dan would wake up freezing. He finally got a separate quilt. During the days, she’d found excuses to step outside into the cold weather, but eventually even the weather stopped cooperating. It appeared winter had finally passed. Temperatures hovered in the midfifties, normal for the middle of March, though the increase in temperature had also brought three straight days of rain, a trend forecasted to continue for the foreseeable future.

  Tracy washed her hands at the bathroom vanity and considered her reflection in the mirror. The crow’s-feet seemed more pronounced, and she could find strands of gray in her blonde hair. Her complexion, her mother’s complexion, was no longer flawless; a few age spots had broken through. She’d never cared before. It hadn’t been important. And she knew it wasn’t the age that bothered her now. It was what the age represented. She felt it in her shoulder that ached and her knee that stung if she turned it the wrong way. Her eyesight, once 20/10 and her best asset for single-action revolver shooting competitions, had slipped to a mortal 20/20. She was nearing her father’s age when he took his own life, unable to deal with the abduction of his baby, Tracy’s younger sister, Sarah.

  And she couldn’t have a child.

  Where had her youth gone?

  She looked at the framed black-and-white photograph on the bathroom wall. Dan had hung it when they moved in, a surprise. Dan, Tracy, and Sarah, just children, sat in the limbs of the weeping willow tree in her parent’s front yard. Why couldn’t she remember that moment independent of a photograph?

  She sensed her mortality, her place in the world, and the realization that there was no one to carry on her genetics, her family’s legacy. The limb of her family tree would end with her.

  Or maybe I’m still getting the damn mood swings because of the freaking Clomid.

  She knew one thing. Standing at the sink ruminating on it wasn’t helping.

  “Tracy?” Dan called to her from the bedroom.

  She gathered herself and stepped from the bathroom.

  He lay in bed, propped up on pillows, reading a legal brief from behind round wire-rimmed glasses that, along with his long brown-gray curls, made him look studious.

  “I’m glad you’re home tonight,” he said.

  She’d come home early because she was testifying at the Article 32 hearing in the morning.

  “Everything okay?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “Negative.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged again.

  “Hey, we’ll just have to keep trying.”

  She slid beneath the quilt on her side of the bed and inched across the mattress, close to Dan. He wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “You want to watch a movie?” he asked.

  “I better not,” she said. “I have the hearing at nine. The prosecutor is putting me on second, after the traffic collision investigator.”

  Dan made a face. “Are they going to allow you in the hearing before you testify?”

  “I wouldn’t think so, but the prosecutor said the evidentiary rules are relaxed, and the defense attorney apparently didn’t object to my being present. And Clarridge and Dunleavy want me to accompany the family, so . . .”

  “I’m still having a hard time believing it’s gotten this far, with the video and all. I mean, what’s he going to say?”

  “Apparently he’s maintaining that it isn’t him on the video, that it’s someone else.”

  “What are the chances of that succeeding?”

  “I’d say about as good as the chances of me getting pregnant.”

  “Hey, we’ve got other options.”

  She didn’t respond.

  Dan rubbed her arm. “It’s still early. Maybe there’s something else besides television we can do.”

  She smiled, but she didn’t feel like it. The failure on the pregnancy stick was still too raw. “You have to be pretty sick of me by now; I’ve been pushing you pretty hard these past two weeks.”

  “It’s been a terrible ordeal,” he said. “Ordinary men would have wilted under the intensity of your torture.”

  She looked up and kissed him. “You’re a goober.”

  “Yes, but the law says I am now, legally, your goober.”

  Dan had always been goofy. Even as a kid, one of her best friends, he’d been goofy. Back then, she certainly hadn’t thought of him as sexy, as she now did. Back then, he made her smile and he didn’t care what others thought of him. Seemed he was never down, always optimistic. She’d called him “Mr. Optimism” once, but thought it sounded sarcastic. She didn’t want to inhibit the thing that made him special, the thing she loved about him.

  “Let’s just get to sleep,” she said.

  He reached to turn off the light on his side of the bed but paused, looking down at her, hopeful. “You’re sure . . . Sleep over sex?”

  She smiled. “Sleep is like sex.”

  “How’s that?”

  “The less you have the more you crave it.”

  Dan laughed. “Who said that?”

  “One of my academy instructors.”

  “Okay. Last chance, which one is it?”

  She smiled and quickly lowered herself beneath the quilt. “Sleep.”

  He adjusted his pillows before turning out the light. Then he pulled Tracy close. After a moment he said, “I know your life didn’t turn out exactly as you’d planned.”

  “That was the Clomid talking,” she whispered.

  “And I’d do anything to bring Sarah back,” he said. She realized Dan was being serious. “But I’m glad you’re here now, lying next to me. And I wouldn’t have it any other way this night, or any other night for the next fifty years, what I know will be the best fifty years of my life.”

  “Oh, Dan.” She rolled on top of him, pressing her lips to his. Amid her tears, she groped and felt for him and, eventually, found that love that had nothing to do with making a baby, but everything to do with needing him close, needing his optimism and spirit, needing to love him and to be loved by him—now, more than ever.

  CHAPTER 18

  Be careful what you wish for.

  Leah Ba
ttles’s mother used to caution her against pining for what she wanted and not appreciating what she had. Strange, then, that Leah would pursue a career in the law, a profession in which no truer words could be spoken. Over the years, Battles had pined for the big cases, the ones in which her client had something important to lose—like his freedom. When she worked those cases, her adrenaline pumped and her mind churned. It was a natural high and she loved it. But those were also the cases that kept her up late into the night and woke her early in the morning, unable to sleep. They consumed her.

  Laszlo Trejo had consumed her.

  Exhilarating one moment, the case and her client could be maddeningly frustrating the next. For two weeks, Battles had been getting to work by 7:00 a.m. and not making it home before midnight. She either ate and worked, or ate and slept on the ferry, putting those precious sixty commute minutes to use. Her exercise had become riding her bike to and from the terminals—except for one night when she absolutely had to relieve her stress or risk imploding. She left work early to attend her Krav Maga training.

  The long hours became a certainty when Captain Peter Lopresti, Naval Base Kitsap’s commanding officer, convened an Article 32 hearing, and made it clear this would not be the typical Article 32 hearing, which usually proceeded entirely on filed paperwork. Lopresti wanted an actual hearing, open to the public, with witnesses and summations. His reason was unspoken but transparent—he believed a strong showing by the prosecution could go a long way toward appeasing the public speculation that the Navy had taken jurisdiction to protect one of its own. That rationale also explained Brian Cho’s over-the-top charging documents, which included the holy trifecta of hit-and-run offenses:

  Unpremeditated murder [UCMJ Article 118(3)]

  Involuntary manslaughter [UCMJ Article 119(2)]

  Negligent homicide [UCMJ Article 134, para 85]

  And, just because he was a putz, Cho had included a charge under UCMJ Article 111—usually reserved for occasions when the enlisted member was drunk but which included a charge for operating a vehicle in a reckless or wanton manner, resulting in injury. He’d also tacked on an assimilated charge under UCMJ Article 134 for wrongfully fleeing the scene of a crime. The prosecution did not have to prove each charge at the hearing. It just needed to put on enough evidence to demonstrate probable cause existed to proceed to a general court-martial against Laszlo Trejo for his alleged crimes.

  The linchpin to each offense required Cho to demonstrate that Trejo had engaged in a dangerous act resulting in D’Andre Miller’s death, thus showing a wanton disregard for human life. Speeding through an intersection against the traffic signal certainly fit that bill. The potential punishments for each offense varied greatly—from a conviction for unpremeditated murder, which could result in life in prison, to a finding of negligent homicide, which was punishable by one year in confinement.

  If Battles had wanted a case in which her client had something to lose, she’d gotten it.

  Be careful what you wish for.

  Thanks, Mom.

  Leah’s plan—if the matter ever proceeded to a general court-martial—was to attack the first two charges with the most grievous sentences, then invoke her Catholic school education and pray, pray, pray for a conviction under either Article 134 or Article 111. Even that, however, would be a miracle to rival Jesus turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana. Battles had delved into the evidence, viewing the videotape first. That was really all it took to convince her that she could not win. No way. No how. No matter how she cut it, Laszlo Trejo was guilty, making the Article 32 hearing a mere formality to appease the public.

  Once she’d reached this conclusion, Battles did what any good trial lawyer had to do. She’d sucked up her pride and brought all the evidence, and its consequences, to her client so they could discuss a plea.

  Trejo wasn’t interested.

  He continued to maintain his innocence. He said he hadn’t been in Seattle—that his car had been stolen. When Battles pressed him to explain the convenience store video, Trejo had simply shrugged and said, “It isn’t me. It’s someone who looks like me, but it isn’t me.”

  Dumbfounded, Battles pointed out that Trejo was the same height as the person in the convenience store. She pointed out that Detective Crosswhite would testify that he’d been drinking a can of Red Bull when the Seattle detectives spoke to him, the same drink the man in the video had purchased at the convenience store. Battles explained that if the matter proceeded to a general court-martial, the jury would view the video and conclude Trejo was lying. She told him, bluntly, military jurors hated liars.

  “It wasn’t me,” Trejo said.

  She wondered if, perhaps, Trejo didn’t understand the attorney-client privilege, if perhaps something in his naval training had led him to believe that Battles, a Navy officer, was required to divulge their conversations to persons higher in the chain of command. She explained that, though she was a Navy officer, she was first and foremost Trejo’s attorney and that she could not divulge anything said between them—not to the other side, not to the judge, not to the independent investigator, not even to their CO.

  “I wasn’t there,” Trejo said. “I didn’t hit nobody.”

  Frustrated, but managing to keep her temper in check, Battles said, “I can’t guarantee you I can do better than what they’re offering.”

  “No plea,” Trejo said.

  That was the night she went to Krav Maga training and nearly killed her workout partner.

  Someone knocked on her office door. She didn’t need to ask who. No one else would be in the office this late. Brian Cho was taking pleasure goading her about Trejo’s unwillingness to take a plea. Cho knew as well as Battles that command wanted the plea, that they didn’t want the hearing, and they certainly did not want the court-martial to go forward and generate bad publicity for the Navy. The longer Trejo resisted, the more Cho insisted that Battles was not explaining the evidence in terms her client could comprehend, that somehow she wanted this case, despite it having every appearance of a dead-bang loser, as Stanley had said from the start.

  Cho pushed open the door and stepped inside. Battles rocked back in her chair. She had the overhead lights off, her desk illuminated under the Tiffany lamp’s green-tinted glass. Cho entered as if casing the joint for a burglary. He considered her paintings on the far wall like it was the first time he’d noticed them, though she’d hung them two years ago.

  “That one of yours?”

  Battles looked at the oil painting, an abstract inspired by a field of tulips she’d visited during a trip to the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. “Yep.”

  “It’s good,” Cho said. “What is it?”

  “Tulips.”

  “Huh.” Cho took another second to study the painting before turning to Battles. “Have you talked with your client again?”

  This guy was as subtle as a sledgehammer. “I did,” she said.

  “And?”

  “He won’t take the plea.”

  Cho lowered himself into the chair across from her desk as if to do so required great effort. The circle of light from the lamp barely illuminated him. “You know he’s going down, Lee.” He sighed, voice soft and sickeningly patronizing—as if she hadn’t figured that much out for herself.

  She suspected Cho had convinced himself that Battles wanted Trejo to turn down the plea; that her competitive nature wouldn’t allow her to back down from the challenge of dethroning Cho from his unbeaten pedestal. Or maybe he was just worried that Battles had figured out how to keep the videocassette out of evidence and planned to surprise him at the court-martial.

  She wished that were true. She’d never tell a client to turn down a deal simply to stoke her ego, especially when she wasn’t making many friends in the chain of command. Rebecca Stanley had been in her office several times asking about the plea and why Trejo would not accept it.

  Cho shrugged and pointed to the box of evidence on her desk. “The video confirms Trejo was in Seatt
le minutes before the accident. You have to know he’s taking a fall. And when he lands, it’s going to hurt you both.”

  Yeah, Battles knew. In fact, she was certain of it, but she wasn’t going to let Cho see her sweat. “I guess that’s why the horses actually run the race,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “Everyone can speculate on the winner, but until they run, nobody really knows the outcome.”

  He gave her a curious look. Then he smiled, another patronizing grin. “I think we do.” He stood and walked to the door, turning to face her, as she knew he would. “This is a one-horse race.” He pulled his blue-and-gray-camo hat from his back pocket. “See you bright and early.”

  He closed her office door. This time she didn’t wait until she heard the DSO’s front door open and close. She yelled, “Thanks, asshole.”

  She sat back, rubbed the fatigue from her eyes, and wondered out loud, “Why the hell am I still in the office?”

  With the evidence stacked against her client, she’d even considered waiving the Article 32 hearing and proceeding to a general court-martial months down the road, likely sometime in the fall. Many seasoned attorneys would have employed that strategy. The extra time in the brig might convince Trejo to rethink his position, as well as diminish the considerable heat beneath the simmering public cauldron demanding justice.

  But CO Lopresti wanted an Article 32 hearing, and he wouldn’t be happy if Battles bailed out of his boat, though that wasn’t why she was moving forward with the hearing. A seasoned defense attorney had once admonished Battles against waiving any proceeding in which she and her client stood to obtain free discovery. Because Lopresti was demanding a full show, Battles would have the opportunity to preview the prosecution’s witnesses and evidence. There was little downside to having your opponent show his hand—even if only partially, especially since this indeed looked like it was headed toward a court-martial. Cho was also likely under orders not to hide the ball at the hearing, not with an anticipated crowd in attendance—all the more reason for her to go forward and find out what Cho intended and what the witnesses would say.