Jessie Black Legal Thrillers Box Set 1

by Larry A Winters

  Jessie thought about running after the kid, or screaming, but Jack had brought the box to the coffee table in front of Jessie’s couch. Her path to the kitchenette—and the gun—was clear. And what are you going to do with the gun? She wasn’t sure.

  “I love pepperoni.” He opened the pizza box. Steam rose and the aroma of fresh pizza filled the room. He pulled a slice from the pie and tried to hand it to her.

  “It’s messy,” she said. “I’ll get some plates.” She took a step toward the kitchenette.

  For a moment, Jack looked like he might object. Then he said, “Good idea. We should eat like civilized people.”

  She smiled. The wall of the kitchenette shielded her from view as she scooped the Glock off the counter. After a moment of nervous fumbling, she folded her hands around the grip.

  Jack did not notice her as she stepped quietly into the living room. He remained on her couch, eating. Tomato sauce spotted his chin. “You might want to grab some napkins, too, Jess—”

  His eyes glanced up and the slice of pizza dropped from his hands, splattering face-down on her carpet. Slowly, he stood from the couch. “Jessie, put down the gun.”

  She jerked the Glock in his direction, aligning the sites with his chest. “Take another step and I swear to God I will kill you.”

  He raised his hands. “I came here because I need help.”

  “That’s an understatement.”

  “Frank’s innocent. He did not torture and kill Kristen Dillard’s family.”

  “That may be the jury’s opinion, but it’s not mine.”

  “It’s the truth.” That earnestness she found so appealing had returned to his voice. She fought her inclination to listen to him. If she let him wrest control of this situation, he’d turn the tables on her, get her gun, and do whatever it was he’d come here to do.

  What had he said to her over the phone? I need to do this in person. She shuddered. “I’m calling the police.”

  “Please let me explain. Then, if you still want to call the cops, I won’t stop you.”

  His arrogance galled her. “You can’t stop me, Jack. I’m the one holding the semi-automatic. You’re the one with your hands in the air.”

  Carefully, she took one hand off the Glock. Aiming one-handed was more difficult, but she kept the sights lined up on Jack’s heart—or the place where his heart would be, if he had one. With her other hand, she fished her phone from the pocket of her jeans.

  “Ninety-nine percent of my clients are guilty,” he said. “I’m not naïve enough to think otherwise. I defend them because I know that without a healthy defense bar to keep it honest, even with good intentions, the state would trample citizens’ rights.”

  “Spare me the lecture. You defend scumbags because you think it’s fun. Law to you is nothing but a game you need to win. The only thing that’s changed since your breakdown is the way you play it.”

  Her thumb pressed Nine. One. Hovered over the One button.

  “Maybe that’s true. I won’t deny that taking on a tough case and winning gives me a kind of high. You, of all people, know what I’m talking about. But Frank is innocent. If he had been executed, it would have been the grossest miscarriage of justice imaginable.”

  She laughed. “You’re a real piece of work. Where did you get that speech, one of the books in your library?”

  “Don’t you get it, Jessie? Frank was my first client that was actually innocent, and I couldn’t help him. That’s why I burned out. After his sentencing, I couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes I saw the sheriff’s deputies dragging him out of the courtroom to be put on a bus for SCI Greene. For death row.”

  “You told Goldhammer you faked the breakdown.”

  His eyes widened. “You spied on me?”

  “I conducted some surveillance.”

  Despite the gun pointed at his chest, he laughed. “I should have known you’d suspect me. I thought I was smarter than you.”

  “I guess you were wrong.”

  “The breakdown was real, at first. But it gave me an idea and I ran with it. I acted nutty in court, committed myself to a hospital for six months. I had already scoured the trial transcript for reversible error, but there was nothing to base an appeal on. I knew my breakdown, in the hands of a good lawyer, could form the basis for an ineffective assistance of counsel claim.”

  “You called Goldhammer? You’ve been paying his bills?”

  “No. Woody Butler has.”

  That threw her. “Who?”

  “Near the end of the trial, I was approached by a man looking for one of the souvenirs the Family Man had taken from his victims. Butler wanted Bob Dillard’s briefcase. He made it clear to me that I could name my price. After I returned home from the mental hospital, I called him and told him that if he got Frank out of prison, Frank would give him the briefcase.”

  “I thought you said Frank was innocent.”

  “He is. But I told him to pretend he was guilty, for Butler’s benefit. With Butler’s money, he could afford a legal team with the resources to win at trial.”

  “Jack, how fucking gullible do you think I am?”

  Her phone, forgotten in her left hand, began to ring.

  “Jessie, please. I am telling you the truth. Frank is in my house now. When he fails to deliver the briefcase, Woody Butler—or whoever Butler works for—is going to come after him.”

  Her phone continued to ring. She put it to her ear. “Hello?”

  “I have some bad news.” It was Leary.

  “Listen to me,” Jack said. “I’m—”

  “Elliot Williams is dead,” Leary said.

  Her gun hand wavered, but Jack made no attempt to take it from her. He kept his hands in the air and studied her face. She swallowed. Her throat felt thick. “What?”

  Leary’s voice sounded strained. “His neighbor heard a struggle and called the police. Two uniforms responded. They found Elliot and a woman named Amber Gibbons on the floor. They were both murdered.” After a moment, he added, “Jessie, their necks were broken.”

  “Oh God.”

  She could hear other voices behind Leary’s. He was probably still at the crime scene. “You were right. Jack Ackerman is definitely involved. If you see him, do not—”

  “He’s here with me now.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve got a gun aimed at his chest as we speak.” Now Leary was the one at a loss for words. After a moment of silence, she said, “You’re the cop. Tell me what we do now.”

  “I’m thinking,” Leary said.

  On the couch, Jack cleared his throat. “If you’re taking suggestions, I propose that we all go to my house. You, me, Leary, and as many cops as he can round up.”

  Jessie lowered the phone with a sigh. “Why would we do that?”

  “To trap a killer.”

  61

  Ten minutes later, Jessie heard an engine outside. Keeping her Glock trained on Jack, she peeked out the window and saw a car double-park outside the building. She recognized the vehicle as an unmarked police car, but still felt relieved when Leary emerged from it.

  “Time to go,” she said to Jack.

  Jack rose slowly from the couch, keeping his hands raised. “You don’t need to force me at gunpoint. This was my idea, remember?”

  She edged across the room and unlocked the door. A moment later, Leary knocked and entered. His gaze went from her gun to the man standing in her living room and back to the gun. He scowled.

  “We should get moving,” Leary said to Jack. “We don’t want to miss the party at your house.”

  Jack didn’t respond to Leary. His attention seemed fixed on her. “You’re coming, right?”

  “Chasing killers isn’t her job,” Leary said. He shot her a reassuring look, then reached for her gun and took it gently from her hands. She let him take it. “Don’t worry, though, you’ll see Jessie soon enough when she prosecutes you and your buddies for first degree murder.”

 
“I’m coming,” Jessie said.

  Leary looked at her sharply, but did not argue the point. If her insistence on tagging along annoyed him, he took out his frustration on Jack, grabbing the man and shoving him toward the door. “Let’s go.”

  Outside, after depositing Jack roughly in the back seat of the unmarked car, he turned to Jessie. “I won’t stop you, but I don’t think you should come with us. We’re dealing with dangerous people, Jack included.”

  “Then why did you leave my gun in the apartment?”

  “That’s my point. I don’t want you running around with a gun. And I don’t want you to have to participate in the circus show Jack’s been planning.”

  Jessie appreciated his concern. Jack’s plan to “trap a killer” involved hanging out with another one. In addition to a specific list of cops, technicians, and specialists that Jack had requested Leary summon to his house, another man would also be present. Ramsey.

  “Come on, Mark. I can’t just go back into my apartment and watch TV. I need to see this through.”

  They stood in the cold for another moment as he looked at the ground, mulling her words. Finally, he nodded, and gestured for her to get in the car.

  Entering Jack’s trinity house, Jessie was surprised by the number of people. The house had appeared quiet on the outside—she supposed the police had kept their arrival low-profile, in case the house was being watched—but inside, cops and technicians crowded the living room. Their faces turned expectantly toward the new arrivals.

  Leary took her by the arm, guided her to one of the chairs near the center of the room. “Try to stay away from the windows.”

  “I’m fine.” She moved toward the chair but did not sit. On the couch, no more than four feet away, Frank Ramsay sat, watching her. No way in hell she would sit down with that man.

  Leary cleared his throat and addressed the room. “Thank you all for coming on short notice. Just to recap, we are here because there may be an opportunity to get a bead on a man named Woody Rushford, who we believe to have murdered multiple people, including a witness in a homicide trial and the nephew of a prosecutor, among other innocents.”

  “Rushford?” Jack said. “You mean Butler.”

  “No, I don’t. We recovered blood and one partial fingerprint from Elliot Williams’s apartment,” Leary said. “They were identified as belonging to Woody Rushford, a former corrections officer at the state prison in Huntington and the brother of Michael Rushford, creator of the Rushford Foundation, Bob Dillard’s employer. Butler is an alias.”

  “Bob Dillard?” Jessie did not understand the connection. “Are you saying Rushford had something to do with the attack on the Dillards?”

  “No. I think that much is clear. Whoever committed that crime”—Leary’s gaze seemed to linger on Ramsey—“let’s just call that person the Family Man, didn’t seem to even know about Rushford when he chose the Dillards as victims. I think the attack on the Dillards, as well as the theft of Bob Dillard’s briefcase as a trophy, were completely unrelated to Woody Rushford and his brother.”

  “Then how do you explain the connection?” another cop said.

  Leary shrugged. “Bad luck? I know it sounds incredible.”

  “Not to me,” Jack said.

  Ramsey, nodding, had a faraway look in his eyes. “Woody thinks I did it. He couldn’t have been directly involved, or he would know that’s not true.”

  “And it means Woody will be in touch with Frank soon,” Jack said. “Woody fulfilled his part of the bargain by getting Frank out of prison. Now he’ll expect Frank to deliver the briefcase.”

  Leary must have sensed some confusion in the room. He said, “Rushford believes this briefcase holds information that can save his brother’s life. Research into ALS, a disease Michael Rushford is dying from.”

  “So if I understand this,” one of the cops said, “we need to catch this Rushford guy, and we’re going to use the infamous Frank Ramsey as bait? I’m in!”

  Ramsey turned away. He looked ready to bolt, and why not? For two years, most of the people in this room had worked overtime to ensure his execution. Now they were his only chance at staying alive.

  They waited.

  “Maybe we should order some Chinese food.” Jack, pacing back and forth in his kitchenette, was holding a menu.

  Jessie looked away from him, disgusted,

  “Jessie, before this is all over, we need to talk. I need to—”

  “Apologize?”

  “Well, yeah. And explain—”

  “Don’t bother.”

  “I did what I thought I needed to do to keep an innocent man out of prison. But that’s no excuse for using you the way I did. Although, I’m sure you’ll admit that under different circumstances, you might have used me. To put a man in prison.”

  She laughed. “No, Jack. I wouldn’t have.”

  “It was a matter of life and death.”

  She walked away from him. Arguing with him would be useless; she didn’t know how to express her feelings anyway. To explain to him why some things should be out of bounds.

  “How about that Chinese?” he said to her back.

  Before she could answer, Jack’s mobile phone began to ring.

  They gathered around the desk in Jack’s upstairs office. His mobile phone had been moved to the center of his desk and connected to a chunky police department laptop. Someone had pushed the swivel chair to a corner of the room. Jessie, Leary, Jack, Ramsey, and assorted cops and technicians crowded the small space.

  When Leary gave him the signal, Jack leaned over the ringing phone. One of the techs triggered the laptop, and the phone line became audible. Jack directed his voice at the phone. “Hello?”

  Jessie knew it would probably be Jack’s mother, or an old fraternity buddy. But she leaned forward anyway, her body taut.

  “It’s me.”

  The voice coming from the speaker was gruff, but also strangely fuzzy, as if he had a broken nose. Jessie caught Ramsey and Jack exchanging an uncertain glance, as if they weren’t sure it was Woody at the other end of the line. Jack seemed to forget that it was his turn to talk until Leary nudged him. He blurted, “How’s it going, man?”

  “How’s it going? Where is he, you jackass?”

  Leary made a twirling motion with his hand. Spin this out. Keep him on the line.

  “Uh, where is who?”

  A sigh crackled through the speaker. “If you’re trying to hold me over a barrel, don’t. I am not in the mood.” The distortion in his voice seemed to increase as his anger simmered.

  “Hard day?” Jack seemed to be warming up to his role. He glanced around at his audience, smiling. No one smiled back. Jessie willed him to take this seriously, to not fuck this up. Do something right, you asshole.

  “I’m only asking one more time,” the voice said. “Where is Ramsey?”

  Jack looked to Leary, who nodded. “Where do you think? He’s staying with me until he finds his own place.”

  “He’s there now?” The caller’s voice seemed to perk up.

  “Eating me out of house and home.” Jack laughed. Jessie had heard him laugh hundreds of times—and this was the first time it had ever sounded forced. “The man’s ravenous. All that prison food, I guess. He hasn’t tasted real food in—”

  “Put him on.”

  Jack stepped backward, made room for Ramsey in front of the desk. Ramsey had abandoned the blank expression he’d worn in court, finally allowing his emotion to show. Anger. A wave of uneasiness rolled through Jessie as she watched him lean toward the phone.

  “You want your fucking briefcase, Woody?”

  “You got your freedom, didn’t you?”

  One of the techs pulled Leary aside. Jessie watched them whisper to each other near Jack’s bookshelves. When they returned, Leary said into her ear, “We have a fix on his cell phone’s GPS and two cars en route.”

  “Where?”

  “Center City, moving down Chestnut. If we’re lucky, we’ll b
e able to grab him now.”

  Jessie shook her head and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Luck hasn’t exactly been on our side.”

  Leary nodded grimly, his eyes glued to Ramsey. “Keep him occupied,” he said quietly.

  “If you want the briefcase, come here and pick it up,” Ramsey said.

  “You’re going to drop it off.”

  Ramsey was either a much better actor than Jack, or he really had no fear of the man on the phone. “I’m not a delivery boy. I just got out of prison—”

  “Because of me!”

  “—and there are a few things I’ve been waiting to do.” Leary signaled to him again—keep it going—but the gesture was unnecessary. Ramsey seemed to know exactly how to antagonize the man on the other end of the line. “I’ve got a whole list of things I’ve been missing. A good meal. A movie on a nice, big screen, maybe 3D. A drink at a bar. A girl.”

  “You listen to me, you murdering, rapist son of a bitch—” Now there was real rage in Woody’s voice. “I don’t want to hear about all the shit you’re going to do. You deserve to be dead, and the only reason I can live with myself for helping you is that I know—I know—that eventually you’ll burn in Hell.”

  “Then I guess you’ll be there to keep me company.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Leary shook his head and sliced his hand in front of his throat. Jessie felt his panic. The last thing they needed was for Ramsey to tip his hand. He was not supposed to know about the murders his benefactor had committed.

  “Isn’t that where assholes go?” Ramsey said, recovering.

  “You’re calling me an asshole? That’s a laugh. You know how many years I spent keeping animals like you in line? You’re going to bring the briefcase to me.”

  “Where?”

  “There’s a house—”

  “Streets change. I’ve been in prison, remember? I may not know my way around as well as I used to.”

  “You won’t have a problem finding this house.”

  Ramsey glanced at Leary. Apparently he’d run out of ways to stall. “What’s the address?”