Jessie pulled a black suit from her closet and laid it across her bed. Her doctor had urged her to remain at home for a few weeks, to fully recover from the fire and the wounds in her calf, but Dr. Friedman would not be the first doctor whose advice she had chosen to disregard. She shook two Tylenol capsules from the container and downed them with a glass of water on her dresser, then began the process of redressing her wounds.
She started with her left arm, peeling the bandages off with a wince. Most of the blisters had opened, but her skin was still red and swollen. Second-degree burns, according to Dr. Friedman. She was lucky. She cleaned the area of the burn, then applied the antibiotic ointment he had prescribed. If Ramsey had not come when he had, she might have needed skin grafts. Or a tombstone.
Next she tended to the gashes in her leg. The skin was purple and swollen around the stitches. Every time she looked at it, she was reminded of Kristen Dillard’s stab wounds. She supposed that was appropriate—as it turned out, none of them had escaped the Dillard attack unharmed.
The thought made her hurry. She patted a fresh bandage over the stitches. Her eyes glanced at the digital clock next to her bed. She did not want to rush, but the minutes were speeding by. Elliot’s funeral would begin at 3:00. She was supposed to pick up Leary in twenty minutes.
One of her fingernails caught the ridge of a broken blister and she cried out. God, she was a mess.
But she was not going to miss the funeral.
Leary was ready and, thankfully, not in any more mood to talk than she was. They made it to the service just in time, even with Leary fumbling with a crutch.
She had to square her shoulders and force herself to enter the funeral home. Funerals had always been difficult for her. Leary saw her hesitate and gently took her hand—careful not to squeeze the red skin—and walked her inside.
Elliot had drawn a sizable crowd. His funeral would lack the grandeur of Jameson’s and Scerbak’s—a prosecutor killed in the line of duty did not receive the same honors as a cop; no bagpipes, no twenty-one gun salute, no folded American flag—but the assembled mourners included several faces Elliot would likely have been proud to see.
Leary nudged her. “Look out.”
For a second she failed to recognize the man striding toward them. Without his black robe and frowning countenance, he looked like a different person. But it was Judge Martin Spatt, dressed in a plain black suit, a sad smile on his craggy face.
“I heard about the explosion. Are you two recovering well?”
Jessie shook his hand carefully. “My doctor says I should heal in another week or so, no permanent scarring.”
Spatt nodded. “Good. Detective Leary.” He shook Leary’s hand just as carefully. “Nice to see you out and about. Your leg is mending, I see.”
Leary nodded. “How’s the courtroom treating you?”
Spatt’s brow furrowed. “Let’s not speak of unpleasant things. We’re here to remember Elliot Williams. You know,” he leaned toward them, conspiratorially, “usually when a lawyer kicks off, I consider it one less cockroach in my kitchen. But Elliot’s death saddens me. He had potential to be one of the good ones. And they are few, believe me.”
Jessie suppressed the temptation to ask where on this scale he ranked her.
“I heard through the judicial grapevine that our friends Jack Ackerman and Gil Goldhammer are knee deep in ethical violations,” Spatt continued, “and may face criminal charges. And they had such promising careers. Such a shame.”
Jessie sensed a distinct absence of sympathy in the man’s voice.
“You taking some time off, Detective?” Spatt said.
“A month, Your Honor.”
“Good. Fewer arrests, fewer trials. We can all breathe easier. Well, I better move along. I’m expected to mingle, you know.” He gave Jessie a wink. “See you in court, counselor.”
As soon as Spatt’s back disappeared into the crowd, Leary turned to Jessie and laughed. She laughed, too, and leaned against him.
That’s when his phone began to vibrate.
They walked outside together. A cold wind whipped Jessie’s hair, which had been unruly since the fire. Leary leaned on his crutch, put his phone to one ear and covered his other ear with his hand. “Mark Leary,” he said. Jessie saw his eyes widen. “What?” he said. “When?” He listened for a moment. The seconds seemed to spin out in cruel slow motion as she waited to hear what had turned his face ashy pale. Finally, the call ended and he put away his phone.
She raised her eyebrows.
“That was the Camden County Police Department, in New Jersey. They claim they’ve arrested the Family Man. The real one this time.”
68
At a police station in Camden, New Jersey, a Camden homicide detective named John Costa led Leary to the evidence room. The man was a bear, at least six feet, six inches tall, but he seemed mellow and eager to help. More importantly, he was kind enough not to look impatient as Leary limped his slow way forward on his crutch, or to make any jokes about Camden succeeding where Philly had failed. At the desk, Leary scrawled his name, the date, and the time into the evidence log.
“What are you looking for, exactly?” Costa said. Leary did not answer his question. The truth was, he didn’t know exactly what he was looking for. Wouldn’t know even if he saw it.
The evidence clerk placed the briefcase on the counter in front of them.
“Oh, we opened that already,” Costa said.
“I see that.”
The broken locks reflected the overhead light in weird patterns where the metal twisted away from the side of the briefcase.
“We took photographs before we broke the locks,” Costa said. “You can look at those if you want.”
Leary shook his head. He pulled a pair of latex gloves over his hands and popped the case open.
Leary removed two thick notebooks from the case. He opened the first, flipped through the pages. Bob Dillard’s neat handwriting covered every one. Here and there, a computer printout had been pasted into the book—a graph, a spreadsheet. Leary did not bother trying to make sense of it. He placed the notebooks to one side.
Under the notebooks was a collection of glass tubes. Fluid swished inside them. Leary held one close to his face and read the label wrapped around its neck. Dillard must have used some sort of code—the sequence of letters and numbers seemed arbitrary.
The briefcase also contained a rubber-banded stack of Petri dishes. Leary removed the rubber band and examined each dish. Again, the labels told him nothing.
“You didn’t send these to a lab for analysis?” Leary said.
“Why bother?” Costa said. “They’re not relevant to the murders.”
“They may be relevant to a case I was working in Philly.”
“Yeah?” Costa looked interested. “We can release the briefcase into your custody. I’ll get someone started on the paperwork.”
“Thanks.” Leary closed the briefcase, snapped the gloves off of his hands. He would learn more about the contents of Bob Dillard’s briefcase after the lab in Philly analyzed them.
Maybe they revealed a breakthrough treatment for ALS.
Maybe they revealed dick squat.
For one person, the answer no longer mattered. Early that morning, in the bedroom of his home in Chestnut Hill, Michael Rushford had quietly passed away.
“Anything else I can help you with?” Costa said.
Leary nodded. “There is one other thing.”
69
Jessie and Leary stood to either side of Kristen Dillard. They had agreed to remain quiet, give her time. She stared through the one-way glass into an interrogation room where a man named Todd Wilson sat in a battered metal chair. He resembled Frank Ramsey in general shape only—both were big, broad-shouldered men, with square jaws and black hair—but the resemblance ended there.
“That’s not him,” Kristen said.
Jessie’s eyes shifted focus from Wilson to Kristen’s reflection in the glass. “He was caught in the a
ct, Kristen,” she said. “The police pulled him off of a woman named Rebecca Purcell. He had a butcher knife in his hand.”
“He was wearing a ski mask,” Leary said. “Gloves, a watch like the one you described.”
“When they searched his house, they found your father’s briefcase, among other souvenirs.”
Kristen shook her head. Tears spilled from her eyes and trailed down her cheeks. “That’s not him. Ramsey set him up somehow.”
Leary said, “One of the souvenirs found in his house was an antique compact mirror belonging to a woman named Irene Barker. She and her family were murdered in their home during Ramsey’s second trial, while he was in custody. Until now, the police assumed it was the work of a copycat.”
“I don’t care. That’s not him.”
Jessie tried to take her hand, but she yanked it away. She turned from the window, stalked out of the observation room and into the gloomy hallway. Leary sighed, looked at Jessie with a defeated expression.
She said, “I thought this would ... help her.”
“I know. Come on. Let’s take her back to the institution.”
They found her on a bench in the hallway. She was bent over, her head in her hands. Watching her body shudder as she sobbed opened a pit in Jessie’s stomach. She went to the bench, sat down beside her. “I’m sorry, Kristen. We shouldn’t have brought you here.”
“I’ll give you some space,” Leary said. “Need to use the bathroom anyway.” Before she could stop him, he crutched his way down the hallway.
“Kristen?” Jessie found a clean tissue in her bag and tried to give it to her, but the girl would not take it.
“Come on, Wilson. Move it.”
Her back stiffened. Two officers had taken Wilson from the interrogation room and were leading him down the hallway. In this direction. She looked at Kristen, looked down the hall to the cops.
There was no time to stop them. They marched Wilson right past the bench on which they sat. Kristen looked up as the man trundled by.
“That smell....”
Jessie looked at her, concerned. Wilson was past them now. The officers pushed him through a door at the end of the hall, and he was gone.
Kristen continued to sniff the air. “That ... oh God. That smell.”
Fresh tears burst from her eyes.
Jessie sniffed the air. A faint trace of the man’s odor lingered. She remembered, suddenly, her meeting with Monica Chan at NYU. Kate Moscow’s former graduate student. The one conducting research on the relationship between scent and memory.
Did you know that odors are the strongest memory triggers experienced by humans?
“Oh God.” Kristen repeated the phrase as she pressed her hands against her face. “Oh God. Oh God.”
Jessie hesitated only for a moment, then pulled the girl to her. Kristen pushed her face into Jessie’s shoulder. Warm tears dampened Jessie’s blouse as the girl shuddered in her arms. Her keening sobs echoed down the hallway. Jessie held her shaking body and rubbed her back, the motion reminding her of the way her own mother used to soothe her, so many years ago. Her own tears filled her eyes, blurring the hallway.
“It’s okay,” Jessie said. “It’s over now. It’s finally over.”
THE END
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—Larry A. Winters
Informant
A Jessie Black Legal Thriller
1
People think they’re safe in a courthouse. They’re not—especially in Philadelphia. As a deputy sheriff going on four years, Kurt Garrett knew that better than most. He’d seen his share of violence here in the deceptively dignified halls of the Justice Juanita Kidd Stout Center for Criminal Justice—or the Criminal Justice Center, as he and most everyone else still called it even after its 2012 renaming. He’d managed to prevent some of that violence, while failing to prevent even more. He was still a believer in the Sheriff’s Office, still proud of his badge, his shoulder mic, and the specialized training he’d received. There was no better solution to maintaining courthouse peace. Certainly not the goofy looking bulletproof judge’s benches GuardTech was peddling today.
But here in a sixth floor courtroom, Judge Alvin Grodberg was eagerly nodding along to the sales pitch. He stood behind the oversized bulge of a JusticeGuard podium. The thing was a monstrosity, a refrigerator-shaped lectern made out of some kind of grayish-blue, plastic-like material that couldn’t have looked more out of place alongside the polished wood furnishings of the courtroom. It shielded the judge from shoes to chin. With only his head visible, he looked for all the world like a judicial Oscar the Grouch. A team of men in fancy suits lectured at the assembled decision-makers—only one of whom was with the Sheriff’s Office, of course. Garrett couldn’t really blame the judge for his enthusiasm. Grodberg had almost been stabbed two weeks before, even with two deputies in the courtroom, and that was far from the only violent incident to occur in this building.
And, if Garrett was being completely honest with himself, he had to admit that, silly as the JusticeGuard looked, it did have potential.
“You think they’ll actually buy these things?” The voice came from Kenny Rodriguez, who’d come up behind him.
“It’s a done deal,” Garrett said. “This dog and pony show is just a formality. Grodberg wants these things, and he’s already called in whatever favors he needs to get them.”
Kenny Rodriguez looked at him with a skeptical expression, but it didn’t last. Rodriguez may have been a deputy here at the CJC for twice the time Garrett had, but they both knew Garrett had a talent for picking up information. “Thanks for ruining the suspense.”
“Not exactly a secret, if you keep your ears open.” Rodriguez flinched, and Garrett silently cursed himself. He always forgot that Rodriguez was deaf in one ear and sensitive about it. “Sorry, man. I didn’t mean that like it came out.”
Rodriguez made a show of looking at his watch. “Don’t you have a delivery to make to room 306?”
That was it, then. By subtly pulling rank, Rodriguez had just declared this conversation over. It was back to work for Garrett, not that he minded. He took a final look at the fat, rectangular body of the JusticeGuard. “See you later, Kenny.”
He stepped out of the courtroom, then took the sheriffs’ elevator down to the sub-basement. The “delivery” was Tyrone Nash, a first-class lowlife scheduled for a preliminary hearing on a murder charge. One of Garrett’s jobs was to retrieve dirtbags like Nash from the sub-basement holding cells and escort them to their courtrooms without giving them a chance to hurt themselves or others.
About four-hundred scumbags awaited trial—just another day at the CJC. Garrett walked past the cramped, tiny cells and ignored the men who stepped up to the glass to jeer at him. He found Nash in a cell with about fifteen other men. He was sitting on one of the wooden benches lining the cell’s wall. The back of his head leaned against the graffiti-marred wall, and his eyes were closed.
Garrett opened the cell, and Nash’s head came forward. His bloodshot eyes stood out vividly from his face.
Nash said, “You here to take me to the prom?”
“I’m here to do my job.”
“Then fucking do it.”
Garrett yanked Nash out of the cell. The man stank of sweat and body odor, but Garrett held him close. He kept an eye on Nash’s wiry arms and legs as he walked him out of the holding cells and toward the sheriffs’ elevator. “Yo, I want a new lawyer, man.”
“Why’s that? You got a problem with the one you have?”
“Yeah I got a problem. He’s fucking black.”
“So are you.” In the elevator, Nash tried to jerk out of Garrett’s grip. Garrett, watch
ing the man’s body, anticipated the motion and was ready for it. He held him fast. “Calm down, Nash.”
“What’s my race got to do with this?” Nash said. “You saying just because I’m black I have to be represented by a black lawyer?”
“No, I’m saying that insinuating that a black lawyer is an inferior lawyer is racist, and that as a black man, I would hope you would know better.” The elevator doors opened and Garrett shoved him forward into the third floor holding area. This conversation might make for a funny anecdote at lunch, but right now, he just wanted to deposit this asshole at the defense table, the sooner, the better. He marched Nash toward the courtroom.
“Only thing I’m insinuating is that you insinuate my lawyer’s black ass out of here and get me someone else. A Jew, maybe.”
“Sorry, but we’re fresh out of Jews this morning. I suppose you could elect to represent yourself. But then you’d still have a black man representing you, so ... screwed either way, I guess.”
“You making fun of me?”
“I assure you, there is nothing fun about this for me.”
Garrett shouldered them through a doorway and they emerged into Courtroom 306, a special courtroom used for preliminary hearings. Sunlight streamed in from the windows along one of the walls, lighting up the counsel tables and the well of the courtroom. Garrett tipped a sympathetic half-smile at Nash’s lawyer. Charles Pendleton was indeed black. He was also one of the best defense attorneys Garrett knew, and deserved better clients than shitbags like Nash. Come to think of it, Pendleton usually represented rich drug lords and gangsters, not losers like Nash. If taking on pro bono work for the state was his way of giving back to the community, the community would be better off without his generosity.
Garrett pushed Nash into the chair next to Pendleton, a little more roughly than necessary. “Here’s your upstanding client, Charles. Unjustly accused, I’m sure.”
Jessie Black Legal Thrillers Box Set 1 Page 32
